f  GREAT 
ENGLISH 
POETS 


JULIAN   HILL 


^ivun^Jw 

c      1 


GREAT  ENGLISH    POETS 


UNIFORM    WITH    THIS     VOLUME 

GREAT   MUSICIANS 

BY 
ERNEST   OLDMEADOW 

WITH  THIRTY-TWO  ILLUSTRATIONS 


G.  W.  JACOBS  &  Co. 

PHILADELPHIA 


Copyright:  Fredk.  Hollytr. 

ALFRED,  LORD  TENNYSON. 

After  G.  F.  Watts,  K.A. 


GREAT 
ENGLISH    POETS 


BY 

JULIAN    HILL 


WITH     THIRTY-THREE     ILLUSTRATIONS 


PHILADELPHIA 
G.    W.   JACOBS   &    CO. 


BLESSINGS  BE  WITH   THEM  AND  ETERNAL  PRAISE, 

WHO  GAVE  US  NOBLER  LOVES,  AND  NOBLER  CARES 

THE  POETS,  WHO  ON  EARTH   HAVE  MADE  US  HEIRS 
OF  TRUTH  AND  PURE  DELIGHT  BY   HEAVENLY  LAYS. 

WORDSWORTH  {Personal  Talk}. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

GEOFFREY  CHAUCER    .         .         .         .         .  17 

EDMUND  SPENSER 3° 

WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE        .  -47 

JOHN  MILTON     .......     64 

JOHN  DRYDEN     .......     83 

ALEXANDER  POPE        ......     97 

THOMAS  GRAY    .         .         .         .         •         •         •   IX3 

OLIVER  GOLDSMITH     ...  .         .   125 

WILLIAM  COWPER 141 

THOMAS  CHATTERTON         .         .         .         .         •   154 

WILLIAM  BLAKE 169 

ROBERT  BURNS  .         .         .         .         .         .         .185 

WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH      .         .         .  .198 

SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE        .         .         .         -213 

LORD  BYRON 232 

PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY        .....  248 

JOHN  KEATS 263 

ALFRED  TENNYSON       .         .         .         .         •         .278 
ROBERT  BROWNING      ......  293 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

LORD  TKNNYSON      .  .  \  •    Frontispiece 

After  G.  F.  Watts,  R.A. 

FACING    PAGE 

THE  CANTERBURY  PILGRIMS     .  .  •'       *       20 

After  Richard  Corbould 

EDMUND  SPENSER'S  HOME,  KILCOLMAN    .  .         .       40 

After  William  Ha-vell 

THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN       .  .  .         .       52 

After  W.  Mulready,  R,/l. 

QUEEN  ELIZABETH  AT  THE  GLOBE  THEATRE         .         .       58 

After  David  Scott 

THE  DEATH  OF  JULIUS  OESAR  .  .      ^.       62 

After  J,  L.  Ge'rome 

MILTON  DICTATING  "PARADISE  LOST"  TO  HIS  DAUGHTERS       80 
After  A.  Munkacy 

JOHN  DRYDEN          .  .  ...       86 

After  the  portrait  engraved  by  C.  E.  ffagttaff 

THE  REJECTED  POET  .  .  .         .       92 

After  W.  P.  Frith,  R.A. 

POPE'S  VILLA,  TWICKENHAM     .  .  ;         .     100 

From  an  old  print 

STOKE  POGIS  CHURCH  .  .  •         .118 

From  an  old  print 

ETON  COLLEGE        *  .  .  .         .     122 

After  J.  D.  Harding 

8 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS  9 

THE  VICAR  OF  WAKEFIELD       .  .  .         .128 

After  W.  P.  Frith,  R.A. 

DR.  JOHNSON  READING  "THE  VICAR  OF  WAKEFIELD".     132 

After  Sir  John  Gilbert,  R.A. 

COWPER'S  FAVOURITE  SEAT  AT  EARTHAM  .         .148 

After  W.  Harvey 

CHATTERTON'S  HOLIDAY  .  .  .         .      156 

After  W.  B.  Morris 

THE  DEATH  OF  CHATTERTON  .  .  .         .166 

After  Henry  Wallis 

"THE  LAMB"         .  .  ...      172 

From  William  Blake's  "Songs  of  Innocence" 

"THE  REUNION  OF  SOUL  AND  BODY"     .  .         .180 

A  design  by  William  Blake  for  Blair's  "  Grave" 

"TAM  o'  SHANTER"  .  .  .         .     190 

After  A.  Cooper,  R.A. 

THE  MAUSOLEUM  OF  BURNS,  DUMFRIES  .  .         .      196 

After  W.  H.  Bartlett 

RYDAL  MOUNT        .  .  ...     206 

After  T.  Creswick,  R.A. 

RYDAL  WATER  AND  GRASMERE  .  .         .210 

After  G.  Pickering 

THE  CHURCH  OF  ST.  MARY  REDCLIFFE,  BRISTOL          .     218 

After  J.  Varley 

VALETTA  .  .  .  .         .     228 

After  Samuel  Prout 

OLD  BRISTOL  .  .  ...     230 

After  W.  H.  Bartlett 

BYRON  AT  THE  AGE  OF  NINETEEN  .  .         .     240 

After  G.  Sander* 


io  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

BYRON  CONTEMPLATING  ROME  .  .         .     246 

UJter  W.  Vestall,  ^.^A. 

PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY  .  .  .         .252 

tAfter  Miss  ^Amelia  Curran 

JOHN  KEATS  .  .  ...     264 

*After  W~tlliam  Hilton,  ^.^A. 

"ISABELLA"  .  .  .  274 

^After  W.  Holman  Hunt,  R.tA. 

SIR  GALAHAD  .  .  *-'".'«     284 

*4fter  G.  F.  Wat 


ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING  .  .         .     296 

From  a  crayon  drawing  made  in  'Rpme  in  1859,  by  Field  Talfourd 


NOTE 

J\TINETEEN  English  poets  are  discussed  in  the 
following  pages.  The  author  makes  haste  to 
grant  that,  in  an  ideal  treatment  of  the  subject,  the 
number  would  be  either  a  little  smaller  or  a  great 
deal  larger.  Either  Gray,  Goldsmith,  Cowper,  Byron, 
would  have  to  be  excluded,  or  Collins,  Thomson,  Camp- 
bell, and  a  host  of  their  peers  admitted.  But,  even  if 
the  writing  of  an  ideal  book  on  the  English  poets  were 
within  the  author's  ability,  such  a  work  lies  outside 
his  present  intention. 

This  volume  has  been  conceived  in  a  homely  spirit. 
The  names  of  all  the  poets  whose  lives  and  worlds  it 
describes  are  household  words.  It  may  be  true  that 
Chaucer  and  Spenser  are  better  known  by  pictures  of 
"  The  Canterbury  Pilgrims  "  and  "  The  FaSrie  Queen  " 
than  by  the  poems  themselves  ;  that  Shakespeare  and 
Milton  are  more  praised  than  read ;  that  Dryden  and 
Pope  are  generally  neither  read  nor  praised,  but  merely 
remembered ;  that  Goldsmiths  "  Traveller  "  and  "  The 


12  NOTE 

Deserted  Village "  are  l^ept  alive  mainly  as  school 
"  Readers  "  ,-  that  Gray  survives  in  a  single  poem  ; 
that  Chatterton  is  known  not  by  his  works  but  by  his 
tife,  and  especially  by  his  death  ;  that  Co-vesper's  fame 
is  oddly  supported  on  a  few  hymns  and  "John 
Gilpin  "  ;  and  that  Shelley  draws  a  larger  audience 
by  an  earthly  little  album  ditty  than  by  his  heavenly 
answer  to  the  songs  of  the  skylark.  Nevertheless^  the 
nineteen  poets  hereinafter  portrayed  are^  each  and 
every  one  of  them^  poets  upon  whom^  for  a  medley  of 
reasons^  the  people  have  fastened  immortality ;  and, 
although  the  people  are  generally  wrong  about  their 
contemporaries ,  they  are  generally  right  about  their 
forerunners.  Indeed^  when  for  generation  after  genera- 
tion it  goes  on  sounding  the  same  literary  verdict^  the 
voice  of  the  people  is  indeed  the  voice  of  God. 

But,  although  the  nineteen  poets  of  this  booJ^  are 
the  poets  whom  the  people  want  to  hear  about,  the 
author  cannot  hope  that  he  has  written  down  only 
such  things  as  the  people  want  to  hear.  La  Roche- 
foucauld slily  declared  that  most  of  us  have  sufficient 
fortitude  to  endure  the  miseries  of  others  ;  and,  on  this 
principle^  certain  writers  of  poets'  biographies  have 
indulged  themselves  freely  in  the  subtle  joy  of  ex- 


NOTE  13 

aggerating  their  heroes*  hungering*  and  thir  stings  and 
shiverings.  The  nineteen  chapters  which  follow  this 
Note  will  show  that,  with  the  certain  exception  of 
the  ill-starred  Chatterton  and  the  doubtful  exception 
of  the  unworldly  Bla^e,  the  great  English  poets  either 
made,  or  had  fair  chances  of  making,  all  the  money 
they  needed.  Sundry  well-worn  anecdotes  have  there- 
fore been  excluded  from  these  pages.  Doubly  untruth- 
ful, both  as  history  and  as  criticism,  their  absence  will 
not  be  deplored  by  a  single  sound-hearted  reader.  For 
surely  it  is  good  to  tyiow  that  the  poets  who  have  be- 
queathed to  us  so  much  delight  did  not  themselves  fret 
and  ache  in  perennial  misery,  singing,  each  and  every 
one  of  them,  with  a  lump  in  his  throat. 

As  for  the  critical  passages  of  his  nineteen  chapters, 
the  author  has  written  them  in  the  same  spirit  as  the 
biographical.  That  is  to  say,  he  has  tried  to  pay  due 
homage  to  the  poets'  masterpieces  without  shutting  his 
eyes  to  the  weaknesses  and  dullnesses  of  their  journey- 
work.  He  ta\es  leave  to  add  that  not  one  of  his  few 
critical  novelties  has  been  introduced  for  novelty's  sake. 

Outside  a  bald  worJ^  of  reference,  it  would  be 
difficult  to  write  of  nineteen  poets  in  particular  with- 
out betraying  one's  bias  as  to  poetry  in  general. 


14  NOTE 

Accordingly  it  may  be  well  to  state,  in  words  borrowed 
from  Milton  and  Keats,  that  throughout  this  book  the 
poems  which  are  joys  for  ever  are  assumed  to  be  only 
those  poems  which  are  simple,  sensuous,  impassioned 
things  of  beauty.  In  other  words,  the  proud  title  of 
a  great  English  poet  is  yielded  only  grudgingly  in  the 
following  pages  to  such  writers  as  have  lacked  that 
indefinable  spirit  of  which  Edmund  Spenser  received 
from  the  gods  a  double  portion.  Praise  is  stinted 
herein  both  to  those  who  wrote  their  verses  too  pain- 
fully and  to  those  who  poured  them  out  too  glibly. 
Again,  little  enthusiasm  is  shown  for  those  who  have 
enriched  English  literature  by  precious  thoughts  in 
verse  which  had  been  as  well  or  better  uttered  in 
prose.  A  great  poet  must  have  great  things  to  say  : 
but  he  must  say  them  greatly  and  in  a  poet's  fashion. 

Re-perusing  English  poetry  on  these  lines,  the 
author  has  not  felt  able,  for  instance,  to  applaud  the 
attempts  which  are  being  made  to  revive  the  vogue  of 
Byron.  Nor  has  he,  even  after  making  the  fullest 
allowance  for  changes  and  advances  in  poetical  crafts- 
manship, succeeded  in  wholly  maintaining  his  young 
admiration  for  Robert  Browning.  On  the  face  of  it 
all  this  may  savour  of  bigotry  and  unprogressiveness  ; 


NOTE  15 

but  the  fact  remains  that  the  few  Englishmen  whose 
poetical  fame  is  unquenchable  have  shared,  without 
exception,  Spenser  s  magical  and  haunting  gift.  Ab- 
stract definitions  of  poetry ',  such  as  "  the  exquisite 
expression  of  exquisite  impressions"  carry  one  hardly 
an  inch  farther :  for  a  definition  of "  exquisite"  has 
still  to  be  made.  Challenged  to  declare  what  one 
means  by  true  English  poetry,  one  can  only  reply  in 
the  concrete  and  say,  "  /  mean  this  line  in  Keats,  this 
rhythm  in  Coleridge,  this  epithet  or  phrase  or  stanza  in 
Milton,  or  Shakespeare^  or  Bla^e."  A  few  such 
glories  of  poesy  have  been  noted  in  the  following  studies. 
It  will  be  observed  that  an  attempt  has  been  made  to 
treat  the  nineteen  poets  not  only  chronologically  but  as 
interlinked  in  a  chain.  It  was  originally  intended  to 
add  very  short  studies  of  the  more  interesting  minor 
poets,  hanging  them,  so  to  speak,  upon  the  main  chain 
like  seals  and  lockets  and  cameos :  but  space  has  com- 
pelled the  holding  over  of  these  short  studies  for 

another  volume. 

JULIAN  HILL. 

Fclpham,  Sussex. 

July,  1907. 


GEOFFREY  CHAUCER 

"LJALF  a  millennium  has  worn  away  since  the 
Father  of  English  Poetry  died.  His  birth 
dates  back  to  the  epoch  which  most  people  still 
think  of  and  speak  of  as  "the  dark  ages."  Yet  it 
is  possible  not  only  to  redraw  the  main  outlines 
of  his  life  but  even  to  fill  in  a  score  of  intimate 
details.  The  spot  where  Chaucer  was  born  can 
still  be  traced  in  Walbrook,  where  the  South- 
Eastern  Railway  approaches  Cannon  Street.  The 
spot  where  he  died,  once  occupied  by  a  comfort- 
able house  within  the  precincts  of  Westminster 
Abbey,  is  even  more  safe  from  oblivion  ;  for  it 
has  been  ceiled  in  during  four  hundred  years  by 
the  glorious  vaults  of  King  Henry  the  Seventh's 
Chapel.  Chaucer  drew  his  first  breath  about 
1340,  his  last  on  an  October  day  in  1400  ;  and 
many  a  faded  document  survives  to  tell  of  his 
doings  and  sufferings,  and  goings  and  comings, 
B  17 


i8  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

and  ups  and  downs  during  the  three-score  years 
of  his  life. 

We  know  the  names  and  callings  of  his 
parents  and  grandparents.  Again,  in  the  house- 
hold accounts  of  Elizabeth,  Countess  of  Ulster, 
who  had  married  a  son  of  King  Edward  the 
Third,  we  can  turn  to  more  than  one  entry 
concerning  clothes  for  young  Geoffrey,  who  seems 
to  have  been  a  page  in  the  princely  train. 
Records  abound  of  the  offices  which  the  poet 
filled,  of  the  journeys  he  made,  and  of  the  moneys 
he  received  ;  and,  with  all  these  side-lights  upon 
the  self-disclosure  made  in  his  works,  Chaucer 
stands  before  us  as  a  living  and  breathing  man 
rather  than  as  a  misty  shape  moving  vaguely  in 
the  dim  beginnings  of  literary  history. 

It  is  a  pity  that  Chaucer  is  still  frequently 
neglected  by  lovers  of  poetry  through  the 
mistaken  belief  that  his  poems,  so  far  as  the 
modern  reader  is  concerned,  are  written  in  a 
dead  language.  Through  timidity  or  indolence 
many  people  still  take  Shakespeare  as  the  start- 
ing-point of  English  literature,  protesting  that 
even  Spenser  is  too  archaic  for  their  understand- 
ing or  their  enjoyment.  Such  slackness  is  hardly 


GEOFFREY  CHAUCER  19 

consistent.  Admirers  of  Robert  Browning,  the 
poet  who  frankly  stated  that  he  "did  not 
write  poetry  for  an  idle  man  as  a  substitute  for  a 
cigar,"  willingly  exercise  their  brains  in  order  to 
follow  their  idol's  twists  and  turns  of  thought ; 
admirers  of  Burns  cheerfully  learn  a  sufficiency 
of  the  eighteenth-century  Scots  in  which  all  his 
noteworthy  poems  were  written  ;  and  admirers 
of  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling's  ballads,  including 
gently-bred  ladies,  have  not  disdained  a  little 
instruction  in  Cockney  slang.  Yet  the  same 
people  grudge  the  same  amount  of  time  and 
trouble  to  Chaucer.  Probably  they  over-estimate 
the  difficulties  of  Middle  English.  Let  them 
face  the  task  and  they  will  find  it  neither  hard 
nor  dry  ;  for,  after  a  few  prime  facts  and  rules 
have  been  firmly  grasped,  they  can  plunge  at 
once  into  Chaucer's  greatest  poem  as  their  best 
and  easiest  text-book. 

Although  William  Cowper  wrote  many  re- 
spectable verses  after  drinking  nothing  stronger 
than  dishes  of  tea,  and  although  certain  living 
bards  are  reputed  to  find  inspiration  in  black 
brews  of  mere  coffee,  there  has  always  been  a 
friendship  between  poetry  and  wine.  Chaucer 


20  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

was  the  son  of  a  vintner.  He  must  have  learned 
something  of  his  father's  trade ;  for  in  the 
Canterbury  Tales  he  mentions  the  very  wines  we 
drink  to-day — the  wines  of  Bordeaux  and  of 
Spain — and  betrays  a  knowledge  of  the  mysteries 
of  blending.  He  was  born  in  the  midst  of  wine  ; 
and  wine  and  he  never  parted  company.  Thus, 
in  1374,  King  Edward  granted  him  a  pitcher 
of  wine  a  day  for  life  ;  and,  although  in  the 
fourteenth  century  the  Poet  Laureateship  with 
its  perquisite  of  a  butt  of  wine  had  not  been 
invented,  it  is  known  that,  in  1398,  a  tun  of 
wine  was  bestowed  upon  Chaucer  by  Richard  the 
Second.  And  it  is  not  a  far-fetched  suggestion 
that  a  childhood  spent  among  the  hogsheads  and 
leather  bottles  of  his  father's  shop  was  one 
source  of  the  jollity  and  openness  of  mind  so 
characteristic  of  his  works. 

Unlike  the  poets  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  who 
deliberately  sought  exciting  adventures  in  foreign 
climes  as  part  of  their  poetical  training,  the  youth 
Chaucer  had  adventures  thrust  upon  him.  He 
was  hardly  out  of  his  teens  before  he  found 
himself  a  prisoner  in  the  hands  of  the  French. 
King  Edward,  however,  not  only  gave  £16 


a.f 

63    "- 


GEOFFREY  CHAUCER  21 

towards  his  ransom,  but  eventually  took  him 
into  his  own  service. 

But  not  as  Court  poet.  As  a  valet  of  the  royal 
chamber,  the  young  man's  duties  included  such 
unlyrical  tasks  as  making  the  bed.  Nevertheless 
the  atmosphere  of  the  Court  was  not  illiterate. 
Although  there  were  a  hundred  years  to  run 
before  the  invention  of  printing,  MS.  copies 
of  new  books  circulated  throughout  Christendom 
in  large  numbers  and  with  surprising  rapidity. 
Everybody  at  King  Edward's  Court  was  reading 
or  listening  to  the  Norman-French  Roman  de  la 
Rose,  and  there  is  little  doubt  that  an  abridged 
English  version  of  this  curiously  compounded 
work  was  one  of  Chaucer's  earliest  attempts  in 
literature. 

But  Norman-French  was  nearing  the  end  of 
its  domination  in  England.  After  a  battle  three 
centuries  long,  the  English  tongue  was  once 
more  becoming  the  language  of  the  nation.  A 
year  or  two  before  Chaucer  entered  the  King's 
service,  Parliament  had  been  opened  with  a 
speech  in  English,  and  the  time  was  ripe  for  the 
founding  of  a  national  school  of  poetry. 

In  our  own  days,  when  nations  are  growing 


22  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

self-conscious,  it  is  sometimes  claimed  that  the 
moment  has  come  for  some  particular  race  to 
establish  or  revive  its  truly  national  music,  or 
literature,  or  painting.  "  Movements "  are  set 
going :  and  they  generally  come  to  a  dead  halt, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  the  Hour  has  arrived 
without  the  Man.  But,  in  the  fourteenth 
century,  the  man  was  at  hand  ;  and  Chaucer  made 
his  epoch  as  much  as  his  epoch  made  Chaucer. 

Among  people  who  never  read  him,  there  is  a 
curious  notion  that  Chaucer  was  merely  a  teller 
of  stories  in  verse,  telling  a  tale  simply  for  the 
tale's  sake.  There  can  be  no  greater  error.  He 
was  as  fastidious  a  literary  artist  as  Tennyson, 
and  the  first  of  his  great  English  poems,  The 
Book  of  the  Duchess,  is  as  far  as  possible  from  the 
ballad-maker's  rudeness.  If  the  poets  of  France 
and  Italy  had  been  able  to  read  it,  they  would 
have  been  forced  to  admit  that  they  had  a  brother 
and  an  equal  in  England.  And  this  is  why 
Chaucer  is  justly  honoured  as  the  Father  of 
English  poetry — not  merely  because  his  work  is 
truly  English,  but  because  it  is  truly  poetry  as 
well. 

By  the  time  he  began  The  Book  of  the  Duchess, 


GEOFFREY  CHAUCER  23 

Chaucer  had  ceased  to  make  beds  and  had  risen 
to  be  a  "  royal  squire."  He  was  sent  abroad  on 
diplomatic  missions,  and  is  supposed  to  have 
met  Petrarch  in  Italy.  Every  genuine  poet  who 
visits  Italy  comes  back  more  of  a  poet  for  his 
journey  ;  and  Chaucer  was  no  exception.  No 
doubt  he  would  hear  much  talk  of  Boccaccio  and 
his  "Decameron":  and  Boccaccio's  happy  notion 
of  setting  a  band  of  people  to  tell  stories  may  have 
suggested  to  Chaucer  the  band  of  motley  pilgrims 
taking  turns  to  tell  the  Canterbury  Tales.  This, 
however,  is  not  to  say  that  the  Englishman  was 
the  Italian's  imitator  or  inferior ;  for,  on  the 
contrary,  Chaucer's  plan  is  larger  and  his 
execution  is  marked  by  a  dramatic  development 
and  unity  of  which  Boccaccio  did  not  dream. 

Not  every  poet  has  had  the  good  luck  to  be  a 
poet  pure  and  simple — a  poet  by  profession. 
Just  as  Burns  was  a  farmer  and  an  exciseman, 
Chaucer,  at  the  time  when  he  was  near  his 
poetical  best,  was  called  to  waste  his  years  as 
Comptroller  of  the  Customs  and  "  Subsidy  of 
Wools,  Skins  and  Leather "  for  the  Port  of 
London.  Unlike  the  famous  sinecure  of 
"  Distributor  of  Stamps  for  Westmoreland " 


24  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

enjoyed  by  Wordsworth,  Chaucer's  duty  could 
not  be  done  by  deputy  and  he  was  forced  to  grind 
through  his  routine  work  in  person.  He  has 
left  us  this  unfading  little  picture  of  the  poof- 
city  man  or  clerk  who  longs  all  day  for  the 
evening  hour  when  he  will  exchange  the  ledger 
for  "  another  book "  on  themes  higher  than 
merchandise  and  money  : — 

.  .  .  when  thy  labour  done  all  is, 
And  hast  y-made  reckonings, 
Instead  of  rest  and  newe  things 
Thou  go'st  home  to  thy  house  anon 
And  there,  as  dumb  as  any  stone, 
Thou  sittest  at  another  book. 

Again,  he  confesses  that  he  used  to  read  until 
he  became  dazed.  His  was  the  robust  originality 
which  is  not  afraid  to  expose  itself  to  the 
influences  of  other  minds  ;  and  he  enriched  the 
future  of  poetry  by  not  disdaining  the  present 
and  the  past.  But  he  knew  where  books  should 
end  and  where  thought  and  feeling  should  begin  : 
and  Londoners  remembered  him  as  "  a  large 
man  with  an  elvish  look "  who  walked  staring 
on  the  ground  "  as  if  he  would  find  a  hare." 
When  May  came,  he  protests  that  no  book  could 


GEOFFREY  CHAUCER  25 

detain  him  from  the  singing  birds  and  the 
springing  flowers  :  and  he  spoke  finely  of 
Nature  as  "  the  vicar  of  the  Almighty  Lord." 

Irksome  though  his  official  duties  were,  never- 
theless they  were  an  indispensable  training  for  the 
grand  work  of  his  life.  No  mere  literary  man  shut 
up  among  books  could  have  written  the  Canterbury 
Tales.  Had  the  Tales  been  finished,  they  would 
have  formed  the  completest  picture  of  the  end 
of  the  Middle  Ages  ever  painted  ;  and  it  was 
necessary  that  their  author  should  gather 
materials  by  living  a  great  deal  of  varied  life. 
His  frequent  journeys  on  political  errands  threw 
him  among  all  kinds  of  scenery  and  all  kinds  of 
people.  Like  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  he  was  an 
engineer  as  well  as  an  artist :  and,  after  he  had 
ceased  to  be  Comptroller  of  Customs,  he  received 
two  shillings  a  day  (equal,  in  purchasing  power, 
to  twenty  shillings  in  the  twentieth  century)  as 
Clerk  of  the  Works  at  St.  George's  Chapel, 
Windsor.  He  was  also  appointed  to  supervise 
the  mending  of  the  banks  of  the  Thames. 
Hence  it  came  to  pass  that  he  knew  the  crude 
thoughts  of  navvies  as  well  as  he  knew  the 
tortuous  diplomacy  of  kings :  with  the  result  that 


26  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

his  masterpiece  is  broad  and  human  instead  of 
being,  like  so  many  of  the  works  of  his  contem- 
poraries, narrow  and  merely  aristocratic. 

Books,  solitary  thought,  bustling  and  varied 
life — all  these  elements  in  the  making  of  a  poet 
were  abundantly  granted  to  Chaucer.  But  it 
does  not  appear  that  he  was  fortunate  in  obtain- 
ing the  poet's  crowning  endowment  of  love.  The 
matter  is  obscure  :  but,  if  his  own  words  mean 
anything,  he  endured  eight  years  of  unrequited 
affection.  It  is  also  believed  that  his  marriage 
was  unhappy  :  but  this  conjecture  may  be 
groundless,  and,  although  sundry  lines  in  his 
poems  seem  to  lend  it  support,  it  is  quite 
credible  that  Chaucer  belonged  to  the  large  class 
of  husbands  who  make  joking  complaint  of  their 
servitude  and  misery  while  in  truth  they  are 
snugly  happy.  In  any  case  it  is  certain  that 
Chaucer  was  a  proud  and  affectionate  father,  as 
appears  from  the  prose  Treatise  on  the  Astrolabe 
which  he  wrote  for  his  little  son,  Lewis.  Five 
hundred  years  have  failed  to  evaporate  the 
sweetness  from  the  opening  words  of  the  Treatise. 
It  begins  : — 

"  Little  Lowis,  my  son,  I  have  perceived  wel  by  cer- 


GEOFFREY  CHAUCER  27 

teyne  evidences  thyn  abilitie  to  lerne  sciencez  touching 
noumbres  and  proporciouns." 

Of  course  the  Treatise  is  no  longer  of  scientific 
value  :  but  there  is  still  something  to  be  learned 
from  it  as  regards  the  true  spirit  and  method  of 
conveying  truth  to  a  childish  mind. 

Under  King  Richard  the  Second,  Chaucer 
enjoyed  many  favours.  He  even  sat  in  Parlia- 
ment as  a  knight  of  the  shire  for  Kent.  He 
stood  well  with  the  Queen,  Anne  of  Bohemia, 
and  must  have  been  almost  a  rich  man.  Despite 
innumerable  grants  and  pensions  he  contrived, 
however,  to  taste  of  that  frequently  recurring 
impecuniosity  in  which  so  many  of  the  English 
poets  have  faithfully  imitated  their  father  and 
master.  It  stands  in  black  and  white  that  he  often 
anticipated  his  pension  by  coaxing  for  a  little  bit  on 
account ;  that  he  pledged  the  said  pension  to 
two  money-lenders  ;  and  that  he  was  sued  by 
some  irreverent  creditor  for  ^14.  is.  lid.  On 
the  accession  of  King  Henry  the  Fourth, 
Chaucer  was  ready  and  waiting,  primed  with 
the  MS.  of  a  still  extant  poem  known  as  The 
Compleint  of  Chaucer  to  His  Empty  Purse:  and 
before  the  new  monarch  had  reigned  four  days 


28  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

he  responded  by  doubling  the  complainant's 
pension.  It  follows  that  true  poverty,  like  true 
love,  cannot  be  confidently  reckoned  among  the 
forces  which  compelled  this  poet  to  produce  his 
poems. 

The  two  greatest  and  most  ambitious  of 
Chaucer's  works  are  both  unfinished.  The  first 
of  these,  the  Legend  of  Good  Women^  is  remark- 
able not  only  for  its  contents  but  for  its  point 
of  view.  Chaucer's  "  good  women  "  are  not  the 
saints  and  virgins  of  the  ecclesiastical  calendar  : 
they  are  Cleopatra,  "  the  Martyr  Queen  of 
Egypt "  ;  Thisbe,  "  the  Martyr  of  Babylon  "  ; 
Dido,  Alcestis,  Ariadne,  Lucretia.  That  the 
sprightly  Cleopatra  was  both  a  good  woman  and 
a  martyr  is  a  little  staggering  at  first  sight  even 
in  our  degenerate  day  :  but  Chaucer's  test  of  his 
good  women  seems  to  have  been  their  fidelity 
to  romantic  love.  This  alone  would  suffice  to 
prove  that  they  are  wrong  who  neglect  Chaucer 
as  the  poet  of  a  dead  world.  He  belongs  far  less 
to  the  Middle  Ages  than  to  the  Renaissance. 

As  for  the  Canterbury  Tales,  they  have  steadily 
waxed  in  renown  throughout  five  centuries  and 
they  are  trebly  sure  of  immortality.  To  the 


GEOFFREY  CHAUCER  29 

historian  who  cares  for  human  facts  more  than 
for  mere  names  and  dates  they  are  among  the 
most  precious  of  documents  ;  to  the  genuine 
philologist  they  are  eloquent  with  the  birth-cries 
of  the  noblest  literary  language  ever  written  or 
spoken  ;  and  to  the  simple  lover  of  poetry  they 
are  beyond  price  as  the  legacy  of  one  who  was 
the  first  of  our  great  poets  in  the  order  of  time 
and  only  second  to  Shakespeare  in  the  order 
of  merit. 

It  is  true  that  there  were  Anglo-Saxon  poets 
before  Chaucer  just  as  there  were  brave  men 
before  Agamemnon.  But  the  gems  discoverable 
among  the  relics  of  these  early  bards  are  so  few 
and  far  between  that  only  the  literary  antiquary 
has  the  time  and  patience  to  find  them.  In 
Chaucer  the  beauties  throng  as  thickly  as  the 
flowers  in  a  June  garden  ;  and  one  might  almost 
as  well  close  one's  eyes  to  the  crisp  greenness  of 
an  English  spring  as  close  one's  ears,  as  so  many 
do,  to  the  bright  music  of  Chaucer's  verses. 


EDMUND  SPENSER 

a  surpassingly  great  poet  it  may  be  said 
that  he  is  all  things  to  all  men.  As  they 
read  his  verses,  lovers  sound  deeper  depths  of 
love,  warriors  hunger  and  thirst  more  keenly 
for  danger.  To  commune  with  the  spirit  of 
the  greatest  poets  is  to  drink  so  deeply  of  a 
magic  draught  that,  thenceforward,  every  one  who 
has  dipped  his  cup  in  the  fountain  walks  under 
a  grander  sun  and  under  a  softer  moon. 

But  the  poets  who  are  so  great  as  to  be 
universal  in  their  appeal  are  so  few  that  they 
can  be  counted  on  the  fingers  of  one  hand — with 
a  finger  or  two  to  spare.  Speaking  generally,  a 
poet  speaks  warmly  to  one  sex,  or  to  one  class, 
or  to  one  race,  or  to  one  time  of  life,  leaving  his 
other  readers  cold.  For  examples,  Homer  is 
a  man's  poet ;  Byron,  when  he  is  serious,  is  a 
youth's  poet.  And  there  have  been  women's 
poets,  young  ladies'  poets,  scholars'  poets, 

30 


EDMUND  SPENSER  31 

courtiers'  poets,  sweethearts'  poets,  and,  indeed, 
a  poet  for  every  sort  and  condition  of  man. 
Edmund  Spenser  is  one  of  these  class  bards  :  but 
he  sings  to  the  proudest  class  of  them  all,  for  his 
fame  is  secure  as  "The  Poets'  Poet."  Even  if 
the  rank  and  file  who  read  him  so  little  ceased 
to  read  him  altogether,  he  would  still  be  able  to 
claim  a  kind  of  indirect  universality,  for  he 
would  remain  one  of  the  living  forces  of  English 
literature,  working  through  generation  after 
generation  of  poets  who  will  always  turn  to  him 
for  example  and  for  delight. 

Curious  discoveries  reward  the  investigator 
who  goes  up  and  down  with  his  ears  wide  open  : 
and  the  writer  of  these  pages  has  found  by 
experiment  that  many  otherwise  intelligent  people 
relegate  Spenser  to  a  dusty  shelf  in  the  lumber- 
room  or  old  curiosity-shop  of  poetry  in  the  belief 
that  he  was  merely  a  later  and  slighter  Chaucer 
telling  a  tiresome  tale  in  obsolete  and  ill-spelt 
English.  Such  people  would  do  well  to  take  a 
pencil  and  a  scrap  of  paper  and  to  work  out  one 
or  two  very  easy  sums.  Among  other  enlighten- 
ing results  they  would  find  that  there  is  as  great 
an  interval  of  years  between  Chaucer  and  Spenser 


32  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

as  there  is  between  Milton  and  Mr.  Swinburne,  or 
between  Shakespeare  and  Wordsworth.  Further, 
Chaucer  was  bred  in  the  age  of  faith,  amid  the 
unity  of  Western  Christendom,  whereas  Spenser 
was  bred  an  inquiring  Protestant  amid  the 
Elizabethan  atmosphere  which  began  to  make 
England  an  island  in  the  matter  of  national 
ideals  and  temperament  as  well  as  in  geographical 
position.  It  is  true  that  the  two  centuries  which 
divide  Chaucer  from  Spenser  had  been  barren  of 
great  poets  and  great  poetry  :  but  it  is  false  to 
assume  that  Spenser  simply  took  poetry  up 
where  Chaucer  laid  it  down.  The  Faerie  Queen 
is  not  a  belated  instalment,  with  new  scenes  and 
personages,  of  The  Canterbury  Tales  on  the  to-be- 
continued-in-our-next  principle.  It  is  a  new 
thing,  animated  by  a  new  spirit. 

For  a  long  time  it  was  believed  that  Spenser 
was  born  in  the  year  1553  :  but  most  of  his  re- 
cent biographers  have  altered  the  date  to  1552  on 
the  strength  of  the  following  lines  in  a  sonnet  ad- 
dressed to  the  Irish  maid  whom  the  poet  married 

in  1594  : — 

.  .  .  one  year  is  spent 

The  which  doth  longer  unto  me  appear 
Than  all  those  forty  which  my  life  outwent. 


EDMUND  SPENSER  33 

But,  seriously,  this  is  shaky  ground  on  which  to 
base  a  revision  of  the  traditional  date.  Poetic 
licence  would  surely  justify  Spenser  in  writing 
the  round  number  "  forty  "  instead  of  trying  to 
cram  into  the  rigid  limits  of  his  sonnet  the  more 
unmanageable  syllables  of  the  prosaically  exact 
"  thirty-nine."  When  biographers  go  about 
their  work  in  so  literal  a  fashion  one  is  tempted 
to  wish  that  only  poets  should  be  allowed  to 
write  other  poets'  lives. 

Like  Chaucer,  Spenser  was  born  in  London  : 
but  he  was  at  pains  to  assert  a  relationship  with 
the  Spencers  of  Althorp,  whose  noble  line  has 
persisted  down  to  our  own  days.  Seeing  that 
the  times  were  lax  as  regards  the  spelling  of 
names,  it  is  difficult  to  understand  why  Spenser 
did  not  strengthen  his  pretensions  by  changing 
his  London  "s"  for  the  Althorp  "c."  But  young 
Edmund's  entrance  into  life  was  made  humbly. 
From  Merchant  Taylors',  his  school,  (where  a 
record  exists  concerning  two  yards  of  cloth  for  a 
funeral  gown  given  to  Edmund  Spenser,)  he 
went  in  1569,  as  a  poor  scholar,  to  Pembroke 
College,  Cambridge. 

Spenser    remained  at  Cambridge  until   1576, 


34  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

when  he  took  his  Master's  degree.  But  it  does 
not  appear  that  he  became  a  genuinely  learned 
man.  His  works  are  rife  with  inaccuracies, 
some  of  which,  unlike  Shakespeare's,  offend  the 
reader.  For  example,  the  last  line  of  the  noble 
fragment  on  Mutabilitie — in  many  respects  the 
most  deeply  thought  and  loftily  expressed  of  all  his 
writings — is  spoilt  by  what  is  either  an  ill-placed 
pun  or  a  piece  of  ignorance.  Spenser  exclaims : — 

O,  Sabaoth's  God,  grant  me  that  Sabbath's  sight ! 

as  though  "  Sabaoth's  God  " — that  is  to  say,  "  the 
God  of  Hosts  " — is  an  interchangeable  expression 
for  "Sabbath's  God" — that  is  to  say,  the  God  who 
ordained  the  Sabbath,  or  seventh  day,  of  rest. 

But,  although  he  did  not  become  minutely 
learned,  the  poor  scholar  made  good  friends  at 
Cambridge,  notably  Gabriel  Harvey.  There  is 
fairly  conclusive  evidence  that  in  1569,  between 
school  and  university,  Spenser  had  been  employed, 
as  a  nameless  hack,  to  translate  certain  poems  of 
Petrarch  ;  and  it  was  clearly  understood  by 
Harvey  and  his  circle  that  the  young  man  had 
literary  intentions.  They  believed,  however,  in 
common  with  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  who  eventually 


EDMUND  SPENSER  35 

became  Spenser's  patron,  that  the  way  of  salvation 
for  English  poetry  ran  through  un-English 
regions.  That  is  to  say,  they  preached  the 
imitation  of  Italian  models,  denounced  "  bar- 
barous rymes,"  and  tried  to  impose  artificial 
laws  of  quantity  upon  vernacular  poets.  In  his 
Areopagus,  Sidney  taught  these  evil  doctrines 
with  so  much  enthusiasm  that,  for  a  time,  Spenser 
fell  into  heresy  and  wrote  worthless  verses  in 
the  Italian  style  under  the  affected  and  exotic 
name  of  "  Immerito." 

Mists  hang  over  Spenser's  whereabouts  and 
doings  soon  after  his  departure  from  Cambridge. 
But  the  mists  serve  to  make  more  magical  the  one 
sure  fact  which  beams  through  them.  During 
an  absence,  for  some  purpose  unknown,  some- 
where or  other  in  the  north  of  England,  Spenser 
fell  magnificently  in  love.  His  beloved,  a 
mysterious  Rosalind,  "  the  widow's  daughter  of 
the  glen,"  paid  him  compliments  but  refused  him 
her  hand.  A  great  deal  of  poetry  sprang  from 
the  affair  ;  and  the  fidelity  with  which  Spenser 
claimed  to  adore  her  memory  almost  to  the  end 
of  his  days  seems  to  have  been  something  better 
than  literary  affectation. 


36  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Returning  to  the  south,  the  despairing  lover 
tried  to  mend  his  heart  not  only  with  the  price- 
less friendship  of  Sidney  but  also  with  the  smiles 
of  another  lady.  To  his  friends,  who  knew  all 
about  the  hard-hearted  Rosalind  in  the  north, 
he  was  so  wholly  unabashed  in  calling  the  new 
beauty  his  "  corculum " — which  is  very  ugly 
Latin  for  "  sweetheart " — that  Harvey  responded 
by  hailing  her  as  "  altera  Rosalindula  " — which 
is  nimble  Latin  but  clumsy  gallantry — and  as 
"  mea  bellissima  Colina  Clouta." 

"  Colina  Clouta,"  of  course,  is  a  playful  femin- 
ine form  of  Colin  Clout,  the  bucolic  name  assumed 
by  Spenser  for  the  purposes  of  his  first  consider- 
able poem,  The  Shepherd's  Calendar.  The  Calendar 
appeared  in  1580.  For  prudential  reasons  the 
poet's  name  was  not  on  the  title-page  :  for  the 
text  contained  a  chivalrous  mention  of  Spenser's 
old  patron,  Bishop  Grindal  (thinly  dissembled  as 
Algrind),  who  had  fallen  into  disfavour  at  Court. 
Instead  of  Spenser's  name,  the  book  bore  the 
initials  "  E.  K,"  which  stood  for  Edward  Kirke, 
who  introduced  the  poem  in  glowing  language. 
The  Calendar  was  suggested  by  the  agricultural 
and  astrological  almanacs  which  were  the  fore- 


EDMUND  SPENSER  37 

runners  of  "  Old  Moore."  It  contains  twelve 
poems,  one  for  each  month  in  the  year,  and  is  as 
good  as  Spenser  could  make  it,  considering  that 
he  still  felt  bound  to  swaddle  an  English  work 
in  classical  clothes  and  also  to  conform  to  the 
affectation  which  turned  the  whole  world  into  a 
pastoral  scene  and  made  shepherds  and  shepherd- 
esses of  all  the  men  and  women  in  it. 

The  Calendar  was  well  received  ;  and  although 
its  authorship  was  not  certainly  known  by  every- 
body, Spenser  had  good  reasons  for  expecting 
rewards  at  Court  or  in  the  public  service.  For 
a  time  he  lived  in  daily  hope  of  a  mission  to 
France.  But  the  Fates  willed  that  he  should 
imagine  the  bloody  emprises  of  his  faerie  knights 
among  wilder  and  darker  scenes  ;  and  he  was 
dispatched  with  Lord  Grey,  of  Wilton,  to 
Ireland. 

Whatever  may  be  his  views  as  to  the  measures 
which  ought  to  be  adopted  in  the  future,  every 
fair-minded  student  is  compelled  to  admit  the 
historical  fact  that,  whether  through  English  mis- 
government  or  through  Irish  obstinacy,  Ireland 
has  truly  been  for  hundreds  of  years  "  the  most 
distressful  country  that  ever  yet  was  seen."  In 


38  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

the  notes  on  Ireland  which  Spenser  left  in  MS. 
at  his  death  occurs  this  remarkable  passage  : — 

Marry,  soe  there  have  been  divers  good  plottes  and 
wise  counsells  cast  allready  about  reformation  of  that 
realme ;  but  they  say  it  is  the  fatall  desteny  of  that  land 
that  noe  purposes,  whatsoever  are  meant  for  her  good, 
will  prosper  or  take  good  effect ;  which,  whether  it 
proceede  from  the  very  Genius  of  the  soyle,  or  influence 
of  the  starres,  or  that  Allmighty  God  hath  not  yet 
appointed  the  time  of  her  reformation,  or  that  He 
reserveth  her  in  this  unquiett  state  still  for  some  secret 
scourdge  which  shall  by  her  come  unto  England,  it  is 
hard  to  be  knowen  but  yet  much  to  be  feared. 

The  "  unquiett  state  "  in  which  Grey,  as  Lord 
Deputy,  and  Spenser,  as  his  secretary,  found  the 
Isle  of  Saints  was  mainly  due  to  the  rebellion 
under  the  Earl  of  Desmond.  In  its  own  turn, 
Desmond's  rebellion  was  largely  due  to  the 
pouring  of  the  oil  of  religious  controversy  upon 
the  ever-smouldering  Irish  hatred  of  English 
rule.  The  struggle  was  to  the  death  on  both 
sides,  as  Spenser  saw  with  his  own  eyes.  On  the 
one  hand  he  was  probably  present  at  the  defeat 
of  Glenmalure  when  the  English  fell  into  a 
deadly  ambush  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  he 
seems  to  have  assisted  at  Lord  Grey's  capture  of 
the  fort  of  Smerwick,  and  at  the  cold-blooded 


EDMUND  SPENSER  39 

massacre  of  the  hundreds  of  brave  Spaniards  and 
Irishmen  who  had  formed  its  garrison. 

In  such  times  men  did  not  go  to  Ireland  for 
pleasure,  and  Spenser  must  not  be  too  severely 
blamed  for  having  looked  after  himself  whenever 
there  was  a  division  of  spoil.  When  the  Planta- 
tion of  Munster  was  in  course  of  arrange- 
ment, Spenser  was  admitted  as  an  "  undertaker," 
a  word  which  needs  some  explanation.  As  a 
result  of  the  long  unsparing  conflict,  vast  tracts 
in  Munster  had  been  so  completely  desolated 
that  one  might  ride  over  them  all  day  without 
seeing  a  cultivated  acre  or  a  standing  roof-tree 
or  a  domestic  animal.  Munster  was  accordingly 
mapped  out  into  "  seignories "  of  from  three 
thousand  to  twelve  thousand  acres  each,  and 
these  seignories  were  assigned  on  alluring  terms 
to  personages  in  England  on  condition  that  they 
should  re-populate  Munster  with  English 
farmers  and  labourers.  Of  course  the  scheme 
failed,  and  Munster  and  Connaught,  the  two 
provinces  against  which  the  generals  of  Elizabeth 
and  of  the  Commonwealth  launched  their  most 
relentless  severity,  are  still  the  two  hardest  nuts 
the  British  Government  has  to  crack.  But,  for 


40  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

a  time,  the  plantation  promised  to  succeed  ;  and 
when  Spenser  "  undertook  "  to  assist  he  received 
three  thousand  acres  lying  round  Kilcolman,  a 
ruined  house  of  the  Desmonds,  under  the  Galtee 
Hills,  between  Mallow  and  Limerick.  Kilcol- 
man is  dreary  enough  nowadays  :  but  in  1586, 
when  Spenser  entered  into  possession,  its  dream- 
ing lake  and  tumbling  waters  and  old-grown 
trees  made  it  something  better  than  the  worst  of 
homes  for  a  poet.  Indeed,  placed  as  it  was  in 
the  midst  of  the  fightings  and  alarums,  it  is  hard 
to  imagine  a  more  fitting  spot  than  lonely,  perilous 
Kilcolman  for  the  writing  of  a  broad,  slowly- 
moving  poem  of  knightly  adventure  like  The 
Faerie  Queen. 

What  had  become  of  the  poor  "corculum," 
the  "  bellissima  Colina  Clouta,"  nobody  knows. 
It  has  been  suggested  that  Spenser  married  her  : 
but  beyond  the  fact  that  he  ought  to  have  done 
so,  there  is  no  indication  that  he  did.  Apparently 
Spenser  dwelt  solitarily  in  the  wilds,  building  up 
The  Faerie  Queen  line  by  line,  stanza  by  stanza, 
canto  by  canto,  book  by  book.  He  had  begun  the 
poem  about  1580,  before  he  sailed  for  Ireland, 
and  in  spite  of  Harvey's  solemn  entreaties  to  go 
on  Italianizing  and  to  let  "the  elvish  queen"  alone. 


EDMUND  SPENSER  41 

Upon  Spenser's  solitude,  in  1589,  broke  one 
of  the  greatest  Englishmen  who  ever  lived — a 
man  whose  life  is  more  crowded  with  excitements 
than  the  lives  of  all  the  great  English  poets  put 
together.  This  man  was  Sir  Walter  Ralegh. 
It  was  the  year  after  the  defeat  of  the  Armada, 
and  although  the  Ark  Ralegh  had  borne  the 
admiral's  flag  against  the  Spaniard,  he  was  in 
disgrace.  Ralegh  was  visiting  his  Irish  seignory 
with  some  money-making  plan  of  supplying 
Irish  pipe-staves  for  the  French  and  Spanish 
wine-trade  :  but  in  the  course  of  his  journey  he 
made  the  greatest  discovery  of  his  adventurous 
life.  He  discovered  The  Faerie  Queen. 

Perhaps  it  would  be  too  much  to  say  that  The 
FaSrie  Queen  might  have  been  lost  to  the  world 
if  Ralegh,  who  was  as  great  a  critic  as  he  was  a 
soldier,  a  sailor,  and  a  courtier,  had  not  perused 
it  at  Kilcolman.  Still  the  risk  was  great.  With- 
out Ralegh's  praise  and  friendly  pressure,  it  is 
conceivable  that  Spenser  would  have  worked  on 
in  the  hope  of  finishing  his  poem  and  that  it 
would  have  perished  in  the  sack  and  burning 
of  Kilcolman  in  1598.  What  actually  happened 
was  that  Spenser  came  immediately  to  London 
with  the  first  three  books  of  the  Queen,  and  that 


42  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

this  first  instalment  was  published  in  1590.  And 
on  one  point  at  least  Ralegh's  importance  in  the 
affair  is  beyond  dispute.  It  was  at  his  instance 
that  Spenser  furnished  the  key  to  the  poem  at  the 
outset,  although  he  had  intended  only  to  give  it 
in  the  twelfth  book,  which  he  never  lived  to  write. 

On  his  own  confession,  Spenser's  poem  is  an 
ethical  allegory.  He  imagined  a  "  faerie  queen  " 
who,  on  the  twelve  successive  days  of  her  annual 
festival,  sent  twelve  knights  on  twelve  adven- 
tures. Each  knight  was  intended  to  embody 
some  manly  virtue  :  and  by  imagining  these 
twelve  virtues  summed  up  in  one  hero  the  reader 
would  compose  a  picture  of  the  ideal  knight  or 
of  the  perfect  Christian  gentleman. 

Although  The  Fae'rie  Queen  as  we  have  it  to- 
day— that  is  to  say,  the  three  books  published  in 
1590,  the  three  books  published  in  1596,  and  the 
fragments  of  a  seventh  book  found  after  Spenser's 
death — is  so  long  that  the  man  who  has  read  it 
straight  through  is  regarded  as  a  literary  prodigy, 
only  about  one-fourth  of  the  projected  work  was 
executed.  Nevertheless  the  poet  wrote  quite  as 
much  as  his  allegory  would  stand.  It  is  full  of 
pictures  and  full  of  music  :  but  it  is  out  of  touch 


EDMUND  SPENSER  43 

with  life,  like  the  still  longer  romances  of  chivalry 
which  Cervantes  was  slashing  to  pieces  by  his 
satire  in  Spain  at  the  very  moment  when  Spenser 
was  sedulously  re-embroidering  them  in  Ireland. 
For  poets,  The  Fae'rie  Queen  will  abide  an  ever- 
green, enchanted,  melodious  wood  ;  but  it  has 
never  been  and  never  will  be  a  seashore  or  a 
mountain-top  where  plain  men  and  women  may 
soothe  or  stir  up  their  souls. 

Like  Horace  and  Ovid,  Spenser  knew  that  he 
had  compassed  immortality.  Here  is  the  dedica- 
tion of  his  work  : —  _ 

To 

The  Most  High,  Mightie,  &  Magnificent 

Empresse 
Renowned  for  piety,  virtue  &  all  gratious  government 

ELIZABETH 
By  the  Grace  of  God 

Queene  of  England,  Fraunce  &  Ireland,  &  of  Virginia, 

Defendour  of  the  Faith,  &c. 

Her  most  humble  servant 

Edmund  Spenser 

Doth,  in  all  humilitie, 

Dedicate,  present  &  consecrate 

These  his  labours 
To  live  with  the  Eternitie  of  Her  Fame. 

As  every  reader  of  the  poem  knows,  The  Faerie 
Queen  abounds  in  that  overblown  adulation  of 


44  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Elizabeth  which  the  Queen  exacted  on  every 
hand.  But,  in  Spenser's  case,  the  flattery  did 
not  fail  of  its  mark  :  for  Gloriana,  as  he  had 
named  the  virgin  monarch,  awarded  him  a 
pension  of  ^50  a  year,  to  the  disgust  of  the 
Lord  Treasurer. 

The  publication  of  The  Faerie  Queen  evoked 
more  praise  than  could  have  been  expected  by 
any  one  save  the  poet  himself.  Even  the  classical 
Harvey  was  so  far  converted  as  to  write  a 
laudatory  poem  ;  and  Spenser,  after  a  stay  of  a 
year  and  a  half  in  England,  returned  home  to 
pen  the  account  of  all  he  had  seen  in  London 
known  as  Colin  Clout's  Come  Home  Again.  But 
he  was  not  wholly  a  flattering  time-server  :  and 
therefore  he  dealt  with  the  seamy  side  of 
Elizabeth's  Court  in  a  further  poem  called 
Mother  Hubberd's  Tale  of  the  Ape  and  the  Fox. 

As  a  man  of  forty,  Spenser  found  a  wife  at 
last.  Although  the  "  planters  "  of  Munster  were 
forbidden  to  marry  with  the  Irishry,  his  bride 
was  a  daughter  of  the  soil,  though  probably  of  a 
family  which  had  bowed  to  the  English  yoke. 
Like  the  Rosalind  of  seventeen  years  before,  at 
first  she  repelled  her  wooer,  who  seems  to  have 


EDMUND  SPENSER  45 

written  of  love  in  others'  lives  better  than  he 
could  practise  it  in  his  own.  But  she  surrendered 
in  the  long  run  :  and  it  was  in  her  honour  that 
Spenser  wrote  not  only  his  Amoretti  sonnets  but 
also  the  superb  Epithalamium  with  its  grand 

lines  : — 

Open  the  temple  gates  unto  my  love ! 

Open  them  wide  that  she  may  enter  in, 

And  all  the  postes  adorne  as  doth  behove, 

And  all  the  pillows  deck  with  girlands  trim, 

For  to  receive  this  Saynt  with  honour  dew 

That  cometh  in  to  you. 

With  trembling  steps  and  humble  reverence, 

She  cometh  in  before  th'  Almightie's  vew. 

Of  her,  ye  virgins,  learne  obedience, 

When  so  ye  come  into  those  holy  places 

To  humble  your  proud  faces. 

Bring  her  up  to  th'  high  altar,  that  she  may 

The  sacred  ceremonies  there  partake, 

The  which  do  endlesse  matrimony  make  ; 

And  let  the  roring  Organs  loudly  play 

The  praises  of  the  Lord  in  lively  notes  ; 

The  whiles,  with  hollow  throates, 

The  Choristers  the  joyous  antheme  sing, 

That  all  the  woods  may  answer  and  their  echo  ring. 

Behold,  whiles  she  before  the  altar  stands, 
Hearing  the  holy  priest  that  to  her  speakes, 
And  blesseth  her  with  his  two  happy  hands, 
How  the  red  roses  flush  up  in  her  cheekes, 
And  the  pure  snow,  with  goodly  vermill  stayne, 


46  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Like  crimson  dyde  in  grane  ; 

That  even  the  Angels,  which  continually 

About  the  sacred  altare  doe  remaine 

Forget  their  service  and  about  her  fly, 

Ofte  peeping  in  her  face  that  seems  more  fayre 

The  more  they  on  it  stare. 

But  he  had  waited  long  for  what  was  to  be 
short  happiness.  Within  five  years  of  his 
marriage,  Kilcolman  was  destroyed  and  Spenser 
was  dead.  We  know  that  two  sons  were  born  to 
him  whom  he  named  Sylvanus  and  Peregrine, 
meaning  "  Woodman "  and  "  Pilgrim."  We 
know  that  he  published  three  more  books  of  The 
Faerie  Queen,  and  Four  Hymns  on  Love  and 
Beauty ',  Earthly  and  Heavenly.  We  know  that  he 
was  designated  Sheriff  of  Cork.  The  rest  is 
horror.  Under  a  new  Earl  of  Desmond,  the 
Irish  in  1598  wrought  vengeance  upon  stolen 
Kilcolman.  Spenser  escaped  to  England,  a 
ruined  man,  and  died  the  following  year  in 
Westminster.  According  to  Ben  Jonson,  "  he 
died  for  lack  of  bread  in  King  Street,  and  refused 
twenty  pieces  sent  him  by  my  Lord  of  Essex 
saying  he  had  not  time  to  spend  them." 


WILLIAM    SHAKESPEARE 


greatest  poet  who  ever  put  pen  to  paper, 
either  in  England  or  out  of  it,  lived  in 
health  and  strength  for  two-and-fifty  years. 
During  half  his  life  he  was  hard  at  work  upon  so 
many  writings  that  a  closely-printed  volume  of 
a  thousand  pages  hardly  contains  them  all.  Yet 
he  died  having  published  only  two  tiny  volumes 
of  verse  which  can  be  perused  in  an  hour.  It  is 
true  that  pirates,  during  the  poet's  lifetime, 
printed  copies  of  all  his  sonnets  and  faulty 
editions  of  some  of  his  plays  :  but  the  fact 
remains  that,  even  in  our  poet-scorning  twentieth 
century,  many  a  callow  youth  has  published 
more  verses  than  William  Shakespeare  published 
all  the  days  of  his  industrious  life.  And  if 
the  reader  will  keep  this  fact  clearly  in  mind, 
he  will  find  that  he  has  the  key  to  nearly  all 
the  major  Shakespearean  puzzles. 

47 


48  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Shakespeare   was  conscious   of  his  greatness. 
In  one  of  the  Sonnets  he  wrote  : — 

Not  marble,  nor  the  gilded  monuments 

Of  princes,  shall  outlive  this  powerful  rhyme. 

And  yet,  after  he  abandoned  poetry  pure  and 
simple  in  favour  of  the  poetic  drama,  he  ceased 
to  take  himself  seriously  as  an  English  poet. 
The  printer,  the  bookseller,  and,  in  one  sense, 
the  reviewer  were  already  well-established 
institutions  of  which  his  little  brother-poets 
were  taking  full  advantage  :  but  Shakespeare 
was  content  to  forgo  them  all  and  to  fling  his 
pearls  before  a  small  houseful  of  play-goers, 
many  of  whom  cracked  nuts  during  the  poetical 
passages  and  shuffled  impatiently  for  the  clown. 
Not  until  their  author's  bones  had  lain  for 
seven  years  in  the  chancel  of  Stratford  Church 
did  the  plays  of  Shakespeare  attain  to  the  dignity 
of  lawful  print.  In  1623  his  fellow-actors  and 
literary  executors,  Heminge  and  Condell,  put 
forward  the  famous  "  First  Folio,"  which  has 
become  so  precious  that  millionaires  will  offer 
for  a  copy  of  it  almost  as  much  as  they  would 
pay  for  a  race-horse  or  a  second-rate  steam-yacht. 
It  is  probable  that,  in  correcting  some  of  the  plays, 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE  49 

Heminge  and  Condell  had  access  to  the  original 
MSS.  and  to  Shakespeare's  own  revision  of  the 
quarto  editions  which  had  been  put  together 
by  hasty  transcribers  of  the  stage  copies  or 
by  shorthand  writers  who  had  attended  the 
performances  on  the  pirates'  behalf.  But  although 
Heminge  and  Condell  seem  to  have  done  their 
best,  the  text  of  Shakespeare  has  come  down 
to  us  more  battered  and  maimed  than  many 
a  writing  of  the  days  before  the  invention 
of  printing.  Saving  a  few  printer's  errors,  we 
have  the  precise  words  of  Spenser,  a  slightly 
earlier  and  immeasurably  smaller  poet.  But  a 
thousand  perplexities  beset  the  pages  of  Shake- 
speare, ranging  from  such  small  matters  as  the 
spelling  of  an  equivocal  word  to  such  huge 
questions  as  whether  Shakespeare  had  anything 
whatever  to  do  with  a  particular  speech,  or 
scene,  or  act,  or  even  a  whole  play. 

The  truth  is  that  Shakespeare  did  not  write, 
like  the  book-poets,  to  be  printed  and  to  be 
read.  He  wrote  to  be  declaimed  and  to  be 
heard.  No  doubt  some  hope  or  plan  of  printing 
in  the  long  run  hovered  round  his  mind  :  but  the 
slackness  or  procrastination  which  ultimately 


50  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

handed  the  task  over  to  Heminge  and  Condell  is 
proof  of  what  has  just  been  said — that  Shake- 
speare did  not  consciously  place  himself  in  the 
bright  succession  of  Chaucer  and  Spenser,  and 
that  he  did  not  foresee  the  verdict  of  posterity 
which  would  acclaim  him,  simply  as  an  English 
poet,  high  above  them  both.  If  a  prophet  had 
whispered  in  his  ear  that  while  his  works,  as 
stage-plays,  would  become  a  trial  to  the  majority 
of  candid  mankind,  his  glory  as  a  poet  would 
outflame  all  other  glories,  ancient  and  modern  ; 
that  his  birthplace  would  be  vis,ited  and  guarded 
like  a  holy  place  ;  and  that  cartloads  of  commen- 
taries would  be  written  round  his  works  as  if  they 
were  an  inspired  writ — if  a  prophet  had  whispered 
all  this,  what  would  Shakespeare  have  answered  ? 
No  one  knows.  But  as  good  an  answer  as  any 
other  is  this  :  that  Shakespeare,  in  his  last  years, 
attained  to  so  calm  a  greatness  of  soul  that  his 
head  would  not  have  been  turned  ;  that  he 
would  have  reduced  the  works  which  bear  his 
name  by  one-half;  that  he  would  have  applied  to 
the  remainder  the  unfailing  artistry  which  marks 
the  two  little  books  he  deliberately  published  ; 
and  that  the  gains  of  such  a  self-conscious 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE  51 

revision  would  have  outweighed  the  heavy 
losses. 

All  these  might-have-beens,  however,  have 
only  been  indulged  in  because  they  suggest  the 
temper  in  which  Shakespeare's  superabundant 
writings  may  best  be  read.  They  suggest  that 
Shakespeare's  plays  ought  to  be  read,  as  they 
were  written,  rapidly  and  eagerly,  and  that  there 
is  no  irreverence  in  recognizing  the  plain  truth 
that  they  contain  thousands  of  lines  which  the 
world  could  easily  do  without.  The  reader  who 
loiters  idolatrously  round  every  phrase  loses  the 
whole  in  the  parts,  and  cannot  see  the  wood  for 
the  trees,  the  flowers,  the  nettles,  and  the  dead 
branches. 

In  Shakespeare's  case,  even  dates  refuse  to  be 
dry.  Both  his  birth  and  his  death  occurred  on 
the  23rd  of  April  ;  and  the  23rd  of  April  is  the 
feast  of  St.  George,  the  patron  saint  of  England. 
The  birth-year  was  1564,  under  the  last  of  the 
Tudors  ;  the  death-year  was  1 6 1 6  under  the  first 
of  the  Stuarts. 

Shakespeare's  father  (butcher,  glover,  and 
wool-merchant)  does  not  appear  to  have  been  a 
native  of  Stratford-on-Avon  :  but,  having  chosen 


52  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

it  for  his  home,  at  first  he  prospered  in  it  greatly. 
He  became  ale  taster,  constable,  affeeror, 
chamberlain,  alderman,  justice  of  the  peace,  and 
high  bailiff  of  the  town.  He  won  the  hand  of  a 
small  heiress,  with  the  pretty  home-grown  name 
of  Mary  Arden,  who  was  able  to  trace  her 
pedigree  straight  back  to  King  Alfred.  William 
Shakespeare,  Mary  Arden's  son,  is  not  for  a 
nation  but  for  all  mankind,  just  as  he  is  "  not 
of  an  age  but  for  all  time."  Nevertheless, 
Englishmen  have  the  principal  part  and  lot  in 
him  :  and  it  is  stirring  to  remember  that  the  most 
English  of  poets,  who  lay  new-born  and  new- 
dead  on  the  feast  of  England's  saint,  was  the 
direct  descendant  of  England's  greatest  and  most 
English  king. 

Even  if  John  Shakespeare  had  foreknown  the 
future  of  his  son  he  could  not  have  given  him  a 
more  serviceable  education.  At  Stratford  Gram- 
mar School  the  boys  were  not  taught  too  much  ; 
and  plenty  of  leisure  seems  to  have  been  available 
for  learning  lessons  quite  as  useful  as  Latin  in 
the  streets  of  the  town  and  in  the  Forest  of 
Arden  and  along  the  banks  of  the  Avon.  Hence 
it  came  to  pass  that  although  the  lad  grew  up 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE  53 

with  a  habit  of  never  reading  Virgil  or  Ovid  in 
the  original  when  a  translation  was  handy,  he 
also  grew  up  with  an  all-round  knowledge  of  the 
chase,  of  falconry,  and  of  rural  sights  and  sounds. 
And  the  sequel  justified  Dr.  Johnson's  dictum 
that  "  the  knowledge  of  nature  is  half  the  task  of 
a  poet." 

A  respectable  tradition  declares  that,  after 
ceasing  to  be  a  pupil,  Shakespeare  became  a 
schoolmaster.  It  is  also  said  that  he  understood 
butchering,  and  that  "when  he  killed  a  calf  he 
would  do  it  in  a  high  style  and  make  a  speech." 
But  these  are  unsure  traditions.  The  only 
certain  fact  about  Shakespeare's  youth  in 
Stratford  is  the  painful  one  of  his  marriage,  under 
a  sort  of  compulsion,  with  Anne  Hathaway. 
The  bridegroom  was  eighteen  and  the  bride 
twenty-six.  The  wedding  seems  to  have  taken 
place  without  the  knowledge  of  Shakespeare's 
parents  ;  and  it  is  a  sombre  fact  that  the  creator 
of  Juliet,  of  Ophelia,  of  Perdita,  of  Portia,  of 
Viola,  was  paired  for  the  remaining  thirty-four 
years  of  his  life  with  a  mate  to  whom  he  had 
been  drawn  by  the  least  noble  instinct  of  his 
nature.  Six  months  after  his  marriage  a 


54  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

daughter,  Susanna,  was  born.  Twins,  a  boy  and 
a  girl,  named  Hamnet  and  Judith,  followed  in 
1585.  Hamnet  died  in  boyhood.  Susanna  and 
Judith  married  respectively  a  physician  and 
a  vintner.  But,  with  the  death  of  Susanna's 
child,  Shakespeare's  line  came  to  a  full  stop  ;  and 
the  poet  who  had  taught  in  the  Sonnets  that  one 
can  only  defy  the  enemy  Time  by  living  over 
and  over  again  in  one's  children  and  children's 
children  was  beaten  after  all. 

While  his  twin  babes  were  still  in  their  cradles, 
a  mysterious  event  drove  Shakespeare  out  of  his 
native  town.  The  present-day  traveller  who 
asks  the  Stratford-on-Avon  gamin  who  Shake- 
speare was  and  what  he  did  generally  receives 
the  delightful  answer  that  Shakespeare  was  "  the 
man  that  stole  the  deer "  ;  and,  although  the 
story  is  rejected  by  a  few  modern  sceptics,  the 
weight  of  evidence  is  on  the  gamin's  side.  Less 
than  a  hundred  years  after  Shakespeare's  death, 
Rowe,  echoing  the  words  of  Betterton  who  had 
talked  with  old  acquaintances  of  Shakespeare's 
daughters  on  the  spot,  published  the  tale  in  his 
Account  of  the  Life,  etc.,  of  Mr.  William  Shakespear. 
Shakespeare,  he  says,  had  aided  and  abetted 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE  55 

others  in  poaching  on  the  preserves  of  Sir 
Thomas  Lucy,  the  principal  landowner  of 
Stratford  ;  and,  after  being  prosecuted,  had 
added  insult  to  injury  by  poking  fun  at  the 
plaintiff  in  comic  verses.  The  end  of  the  affair 
was  a  hasty  flight  out  of  the  wrathful  squire's 
jurisdiction. 

Making  his  way  to  London,  the  fugitive  is 
reported  to  have  kept  his  soul  in  his  body  by 
accepting  "  mean  employment."  According  to  a 
Stratford  parish-clerk  who  was  born  before  the 
poet  died,  Shakespeare  "  was  received  into  the 
play-house  as  a  servitor,"  and  a  more  explicit 
but  suspectable  tradition  boldly  declares  that  it 
was  his  duty  to  stand  in  the  street  holding  the 
horses  of  the  theatre's  patrons  while  they  were 
inside.  In  any  case  it  is  beyond  dispute  that  he 
was  soon  in  touch  with  playgoers  and  players. 

In  these  days,  when  an  actor- manager  is  often 
a  "  Sir "  in  England  and  an  "  Excellency "  in 
Germany,  it  is  important  to  remember  that  the 
players  of  Shakespeare's  time  were  still  rogues 
and  vagabonds  in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  and  that 
they  gave  their  performances  in  the  fields  beyond 
the  walls  of  London  simply  because  the  City 


56  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Fathers  had  driven  them  out.  During  Shake- 
speare's childhood  at  Stratford,  his  father  as 
High  Bailiff  of  the  town  had  encouraged  the 
visits  of  strolling  players  and  had  paid  them 
sums  of  money  :  but,  strictly  speaking,  actors 
were  still  outlaws. 

Here  is  one  of  the  most  startling  facts  in  the 
history  of  any  literature.  The  two  centuries 
following  on  the  death  of  Chaucer  had  been 
almost  blank  :  the  work  of  Spenser  was  courtly, 
literary,  and  for  the  few  ;  and,  altogether,  poetry 
in  England  was  generations  behind  poetry  in 
Italy.  Yet,  in  a  single  reign,  English  poetry 
became  the  most  splendid  and  vital  in  the  world  ; 
and  it  was  perfected  out  of  the  mouths  of  rogues 
and  vagabonds.  It  was  as  though  the  music- 
hall  "  artists  "  of  our  own  times  should  suddenly 
desist  from  trying  to  make  the  English  language 
brutal  and  ugly  and  should  put  into  everybody's 
mouth  ballads  and  lyrics  all  aglow  with  such 
poetic  fire  as  to  make  the  glorious  outburst  of 
English  poetry  which  began  with  Blake  and 
Coleridge  seem  thin  and  cold. 

The  running  of  the  same  play  for  hundreds 
of  nights — a  practice  which  stales  our  actors  and 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE  57 

deadens  our  drama — was  unknown  under  Queen 
Elizabeth.  Hence  there  was  a  brisk  demand  for 
new  works  or  for  old  ones  re-furbished  ;  and 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  Shakespeare's  first 
task  as  a  playwright  was  to  overhaul  the  thread- 
bare plays  in  the  repertory,  slashing  and  patching 
and  re-embroidering  until  they  were  made  modish 
and  bright.  As  early  as  1592  Greene,  one  of 
Shakespeare's  predecessors  in  dramatic  poetry,  spat 
words  of  jealousy  at  his  young  rival,  calling  him 

An  upstart  Crow,  beautified  with  our  feathers, 
that  with  his  Tiger's  heart  wrapt  in  a  Player's  hide 
supposes  he  is  as  well  able  to  bumbast  out  a  blank 
verse  as  the  best  of  you :  and  being  an  absolute 
Johannes  factotum  is,  in  his  own  conceit,  the  only 
Shakescene  in  a  country. 

The  weak  or  dull  or  silly  or  confused  plays, 
or  parts  of  plays,  which  put  so  severe  a  strain  on 
the  patience  and  reverence  of  Shakespeare's 
readers,  are  probably  the  work  of  third-rate  men 
whose  hemp  has  become  entangled  with  Shake- 
speare's silk.  At  the  beginning  of  his  literary 
career  he  seems  to  have  added  good  work  to 
others'  bad  ;  at  the  end,  others  seem  to  have 
added  bad  work  to  Shakespeare's  good. 


53  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

It  has  been  suggested  that  the  downright 
badness  of  some  of  the  earlier  plays  is  explained 
by  the  fact  that  Shakespeare  was  learning  his 
trade  as  a  writer  and  that  he  necessarily  bungled. 
No  doubt  he  made  long  strides  of  technical 
improvement,  and  there  is  as  wide  a  stretch 
between  Shakespeare  the  beginner  and  Shake- 
speare the  mature  dramatic  poet,  as  there  is 
between  Shakespeare  in  mid-career  and  Shake- 
speare's astonishing  fore-runner,  Christopher 
Marlowe.  But  at  no  stage  was  Shakespeare 
bungler  enough  to  perpetrate  the  worst  things 
which  bear  his  name.  In  proof  of  this  it 
is  enough  to  point  to  his  two  small  books  of 
poetry,  Venus  and  Adonis  and  The  Rape  of 
Lucrece,  published  as  early  as  1593  and  1594. 
These  poems  have  been  blamed  on  many  grounds : 
but  no  one  worth  listening  to  has  ever  said  that 
they  are  the  fumblings  of  a  beginner. 

Both  Venus  and  Adonis  and  The  Rape  of 
Lucrece  versify  passionate  and  tragical  stories. 
But  Shakespeare's  treatment  is  remote,  decorative, 
cold.  Hazlitt,  numbed  by  this  coldness,  has 
compared  the  two  poems  with  two  ice-houses. 
It  would  be  more  just  to  say  that  they  are  like 


2   Q 
a    v 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE  59 

two  cold  stone  temples,  consecrated  the  one  to 
Profane  and  the  other  to  Sacred  Love,  and  that 
their  two  legends,  the  legend  of  baulked  passion 
and  the  legend  of  outraged  chastity,  are  figured 
there  with  all  the  rich  colouring  of  church 
windows — and  with  all  the  glassy  chilliness  as 
well.  But  the  point  to  note  is  that,  from  first  to 
last,  they  are  finished  with  the  masterly  craft 
of  an  accomplished  poet. 

Venus  and  Adonis  was  dedicated  to  the  Earl  of 
Southampton  ;  and,  from  the  patronage  of  an 
earl,  the  poet  went  quickly  on  to  enjoy  the 
favour  of  the  highest  in  the  land.  As  an  actor 
he  appeared  before  the'  Queen  at  the  palace  of 
Greenwich,  and,  as  a  poet,  it  is  known  that  he 
wrote  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  to  please 
Elizabeth  who  had  expressed  a  wish  "  to  see 
FalstafF  in  love."  Shakespeare  seems  to  have 
been  in  equally  good  odour  with  James  the 
First  ;  for  the  Puritan  reaction  against  the 
theatre  had  still  to  make  itself  strongly  felt.  Nor 
was  his  popularity  with  nobles  and  monarchs  an 
empty  honour.  It  is  said  that  the  Earl  of 
Southampton  gave  him  ^1000  "to  enable  him 
to  go  through  with  a  purchase  which  he  had  a 


60  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

mind  to  "  ;  and  the  dedication  of  the  First  Folio 
shows  that  the  earls  of  Pembroke  and  of 
Montgomery  had  also  given  solid  proofs  of 
their  enthusiasm.  Indeed,  Mr.  Sidney  Lee  has 
calculated  that,  after  1599,  Shakespeare's  income 
was  equal  to  ^5000  a  year  of  our  money.  It  is 
probable  that  he  hastened  to  the  relief  of  his 
father,  whose  fortunes  had  sadly  declined.  For 
a  time  he  visited  Stratford  only  once  a  year  ; 
but,  having  bought  New  Palace,  the  best  house 
in  the  town,  he  spent  his  last  days  almost  entirely 
on  his  estates  and  supplied  the  stage  with  two 
plays  every  year. 

Of  his  intimate  life  in  London  nearly  all  the 
hints  that  remain  are  will-o'-the-wisps.  The 
beautiful  youth  and  the  dark  woman  who  move 
through  the  sonnets  are  believed  by  some  readers 
to  have  been  mere  literary  pegs  on  which  to 
hang  verses,  while  others  more  reasonably  main- 
tain that  they  were  of  solid  flesh  and  red  blood 
and  that  they  helped  to  deepen  in  Shakespeare's 
soul  the  gloom  which  broods  over  King  Lear 
and  his  greater  tragedies.  Into  the  depths  of 
blank  pessimism  and  atheism  Shakespeare  never 
descends  :  but  to  contrast  his  early  tragedy 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE  61 

Romeo  and  Juliet  with  King  Lear  is  to  obtain  an 
awful  glimpse  of  his  march  into  the  dark. 

But  the  end  was  peaceful  and  golden,  like  a 
sunset.  Once  he  had  shaken  London's  dust 
from  his  feet  and  settled  down  among  sweet 
fields  and  green  forests,  Shakespeare's  spirit 
emerged  from  the  dark  valley  at  the  upper  end. 
For  a  long  time  it  was  the  custom  of  editors  to 
divide  his  works  into  Comedies,  Histories, 
and  Tragedies  :  but  modern  criticism  is  happily 
preferring  a  fourfold  division  and  is  placing 
the  kindly  works  of  Shakespeare's  last  period 
in  the  category  of  Romances.  The  Romances 
include  such  works  as  The  Winters  Tale  and 
The  Tempest:  and  perhaps  it  is  because  he 
wrote  them  with  his  daughters  at  his  side  that 
they  are  abrim  with  a  tender  reverence  for 
young  love. 

Shakespeare  died  in  1616.  Some  say  his 
death  was  due  to  bad  drains,  and  others  that 
it  followed  upon  a  bout  of  drinking  :  but, 
although  he  was  only  fifty-two  years  old,  his 
work  was  done. 

The  gold  which  remains  when  one  has  purged 
the  dross  from  his  achievement  is  so  abundant 


62  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

and  so  resplendent  that  it  takes  away  one's 
breath.  Laughter  and  tears,  love  and  hate,  day 
and  night,  summer  and  winter,  kings  and  clowns, 
town  and  country,  peace  and  war— with  these 
and  with  all  other  great  opposites  he  is  at  home, 
and  his  unwearied  spirit  has  ranged  over  all  the 
tracts  between. 

It  is  Shakespeare  who  wrote,  almost  casually, 
of  "the  dark  backward  and  abysm  of  time";  and 
yet  the  same  Shakespeare  could  be  so  direct  and 
simple  that,  at  the  climax  of  their  tragedy,  he  is 
content  to  let  Iras  speak  to  Cleopatra  in  words 
of  one  syllable,  saying  : — 

.  .  .  The  bright  day  is  done, 
And  we  are  for  the  dark. 

Shakespeare  held  the  mirror — his  magic  mirror 
— up  to  nature  in  a  sense  of  which  the  modern 
realist  does  not  dream.  Shakespeare  is  true  to  life : 
but  so  searchingly  and  poetically  true  that  he  gives 
us  life  as  life  would  be  if  life  were  true  to  itself.  In 
the  world  which  he  discovers  women  laugh  more 
brightly  and  weep  more  softly  while  men  love 
more  grandly  and  hate  more  vilely  than  in  the 
anaemic  world  of  every-day  fact.  At  Shake- 
speare's call,  kings  wax  into  kings  indeed  ;  and 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE  63 

even  the  arch-king,  the  king  of  terrors,  Death, 
awes  and  hushes  us  more  solemnly  because, 
though  it  be  unconsciously,  we  look  with  Shake- 
speare's eyes  at  his  sable  mantle  and  moon-red 
crown. 


JOHN   MILTON 

TPHY  soul,"  cried  Wordsworth,  invoking 
Milton,  "  was  like  a  star  and  dwelt  apart." 
The  words  are  true  in  a  sense  other  than  Words- 
worth's own.  Shakespeare  fires  us  like  the  sun  : 
Spenser  beams  upon  us  like  the  moon  :  but 
Milton's  pure  cold  ray  seems  to  reach  us  from 
outside  our  solar  system,  through  gulfs  im- 
measurable and  void. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  this  chilliness  of 
Milton  is  not  generally  recognized  and  that 
there  are  many  people  by  whom  it  would  be 
hotly  denied.  Interpreting  him  as  they  do  by 
those  stirring  utterances  on  Liberty  which  made 
Wordsworth  exclaim 

Milton !    Thou  shouldst  be  living  at  this  hour. 
England  hath  need  of  thee, 

his  admirers  take  it  for  granted  that  Milton's 
blood  raced  in  and  out  of  a  warm  and  generous 

64 


JOHN  MILTON  65 

heart.  Again,  recalling  his  justly  famous  dogma 
that  poetry  should  be  "  simple,  sensuous, 
passionate,"  they  assume  that  the  dogmatist 
himself  was  a  simple,  sensuous,  passionate, 
elemental  child  of  nature.  The  harsh  truth 
is  that  in  his  championship  of  Liberty,  Milton 
was  an  opportunist  pleading  for  himself  and 
his  party  ;  and  that  the  simplicity,  sensuousness, 
and  passionateness  of  his  poetry  are  nearly  all 
due  to  the  fine  taste  and  self-conscious  effort  of 
a  fastidious  and  industrious  scholar  who,  although 
he  was  certainly  not  the  greatest  of  English 
poets,  was  probably  the  greatest  of  English  men 
of  letters. 

John  Milton's  father  was  a  scrivener  and  a 
precisian — lean  and  shivery  words  both.  But 
he  was  of  sound  yeoman  stock  :  and,  in  spite  of 
his  Puritanism,  he  showed  a  taste  in  music 
which  re-appears  in  the  long-drawn  melodies 
and  organ-like  harmonies  of  his  son's  greater 
poems.  For  Milton's  father  was  better  than  a 
musical  dabbler.  A  composition  of  his  was 
deemed  worthy  of  a  place  in  The  Teares  and 
Lamentations  of  a  Sorrowful  Souk,  along  with 
numbers  by  such  men  as  Orlando  Gibbons  and 


66  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

John  Bull,  and  even  William  Byrd.  Indeed, 
only  a  few  weeks  before  the  publication  of  the 
present  volume,  a  London  music-publisher  has 
found  it  worth  while  to  reprint,  on  its  musical 
merits,  a  madrigal  which  the  father  of  Milton 
contributed  to  The  Triumphs  of  Oriana,  in  praise 
of  Queen  Elizabeth. 

The  boy  John  was  born  on  9th  December, 
1608,  at  the  Spread  Eagle  in  Bread  Street.  In 
modern  England  such  picturesque  signs  and 
bravely-sounding  names  as  the  Spread  Eagle  and 
the  Golden  Lion  and  the  Black  Horse  have  been 
left  almost  entirely  to  inns  and  drinking-bars  : 
but,  under  James  the  First,  the  name  simply 
meant  that  the  scriptorium  of  Milton's  father 
was  reckoned  as  a  shop.  In  this  case  there  was 
nothing  in  a  name.  The  spread-eagle  spirit  was 
alien  to  the  yea-and-nay  Puritan  household  over 
whose  door  the  imperious  bird  extended  his 
gilded  wings. 

From  grammar  schools  and  private  masters 
the  lad  passed  on  to  a  Nonconformist  school  in 
Essex,  where  his  dignity  as  a  budding  bard  was 
so  little  understood  that  the  matron  cut  his 
poet's  locks  as  short  as  a  convict's.  At  the 


JOHN  MILTON  67 

age  of  twelve  he  found  himself  at  St.  Paul's 
School  under  a  headmaster  who,  although  he 
"  had  his  whipping  fits,"  managed  to  push 
and  coax  his  pupil  a  long  way  up  the  steep 
slope  of  classical  learning.  Milton  himself 
declared  in  after  life  that  he  scarcely  ever 
went  from  his  lessons  to  his  bed  before  mid- 
night. 

Oddly  enough,  the  youth's  earliest  poetical 
exercise  is  still  his  most  widely  known.  For 
every  person  in  the  world  who  reads  poetry 
as  such,  there  are  fifty  honest,  illiterate  persons 
who  treasure  the  mixed  contents  of  their  hymn- 
books  on  non-poetical  grounds.  There  are 
thousands  of  places  in  the  English-speaking 
world  where  no  one  could  be  found  to  recite 
a  pair  of  lines  from  Lycidas  or  Comus :  but  there 
is  hardly  a  hamlet  where  somebody  does  not 
know  the  hymn 

Let  us,  with  a  gladsome  mind, 
Praise  the  Lord,  for  He  is  kind. 

At  the  time  of  his  paraphrasing  this  and  another 
psalm  Milton  was  only  fifteen  years  old  :  but 
there  are  couplets  in  his  version  which  clearly 


68  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

promise  the  fine  and  strong  achievement  of  his 
manhood.     For  examples  : — 

Let  us  blaze  His  name  abroad, 
For  of  Gods  He  is  the  God. 

Who  by  His  wisdom  did  create 
The  painted  heavens  so  full  of  state. 


And  large-limb'd  Og  He  did  subdue 
With  all  his  over-hardy  crew. 

At  seventeen,  Milton  proceeded  to  Christ's 
College,  Cambridge — the  university  of  Dryden 
and  Gray,  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  of 
Byron  and  Tennyson.  In  1625  Cambridge  had 
hardly  begun  to  differentiate  herself  from 
Oxford,  and  her  atmosphere  was  as  classical  as 
her  sister's.  But  the  new  undergraduate,  who 
had  acquired  Latin,  Greek,  Hebrew,  French,  and 
Italian  before  leaving  home,  sniffed  at  the 
hoary  seat  of  learning  disrespectfully.  He  came 
into  conflict  with  his  tutor,  and  is  even  said  to 
have  been  flogged  as  well  as  sentenced  to  a  short 
term  of  rustication.  Nevertheless,  he  contrived 
to  endure  the  prescribed  seven  years  of  residence. 
His  contemporaries  called  him  "  Lady,"  because 


JOHN  MILTON  69 

of  his  good  books  and  still  better  behaviour. 
But  all  efforts  to  woo  him  into  the  ministry  of 
the  Church  failed.  "  He  who  would  take 
orders,"  he  said,  "  must  subscribe  slave." 

Horton,  a  typically  English  village  in 
Buckinghamshire,  had  meanwhile  become  the 
family  home  on  the  retirement  of  Milton's 
father  from  business.  It  was  a  place  of  lush 
meadows  and  grand  trees  and  abundant  waters, 
with  a  glimpse  of  Windsor  Castle  to  add  the 
necessary  touches  of  humanity  and  of  art. 
Here,  after  he  had  done  with  Cambridge,  the 
young  scholar  abode  for  five  years.  At  first  he 
was  well  content  and  confessed  that  he  could 

call  to  witness  the  groves  and  rivers  and  the  beloved 
village  elms  under  which,  in  the  last  past  summer, 
I  remember  having  had  supreme  delight  with  the 
Muses,  when  I  too,  among  rural  scenes  and  remote 
forests,  seemed  as  if  I  could  have  grown  and  vegetated 
through  a  hidden  eternity. 

Five  years  later,  however,  he  exclaimed, 
"  Where  I  am  now  I  live  obscurely  and  in  a 
cramped  manner."  He  was  weary  of  the  fields 
and  felt  that  he  had  accomplished  little.  Yet 
these  cramped  and  obscure  years  gave  birth  to 


7°  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

nearly  all  the  poems  by  which  Milton  will  stand 
shoulder  to  shoulder  with  Keats  in  the  meagre 
ranks  of  the  immortal  English  poets.  Not 
until  twenty  years  later  did  he  begin  Paradise 
Lost:  but  it  is  not  upon  Paradise  Lost  that 
Milton's  fame  will  ultimately  stand.  Paradise 
Lost  is  an  astonishingly  sustained  pageant  of 
verse,  just  as  the  almost  contemporary  Pilgrim 's 
Progress  is  a  wonderful  procession  of  prose.  But 
both  these  Puritan  classics  have  been  made  to  bulk 
up  out  of  the  true  picture  of  English  literature 
because,  for  a  very  long  time,  they  were  the 
principal  poetical  and  imaginative  reading  of 
millions  of  excellent  people  whose  consciences 
did  not  allow  them  to  feast  upon  literature  for 
literature's  sake. 

By  1637,  the  year  of  his  disenchantment  with 
Horton,  Milton  had  written  the  Ode  on  the 
Morning  of  the  Nativity  (1629),  L* Allegro,  and 
//  Penseroso  (1633),  Comus  (1634),  and  Lycidas 
(1637).  The  Authorized  Version  of  the  Bible 
was  already  twenty-five  years  old,  and  Milton 
accordingly  has  the  advantage  of  being  the  first 
English  poet  who  can  speak  to  the  modern 
Englishman  in  a  tongue  which  does  not  call  for 


JOHN  MILTON  71 

a  glossary.  The  few  archaisms  which  survive  in 
his  work  help  its  effect  by  their  lucid  quaintness, 
as  in  these  two  fine  endings  of  stanzas  in  the 
Nativity  ode  : — 

.  .  .  the  mild  ocean, 
Who  now  hath  quite  forgot  to  rave, 
While  birds  of  calm  sit  brooding  on  the  charmed  wave. 


And  all  about  the  courtly  stable 
Bright-harness'd  angels  sit  in  order  serviceable. 

In  the  following  lines  of  //  Penseroso,  Milton 
touched  the  high-water  mark  of  reflective, 
decorative  English  poetry  : — 

But  let  my  due  feet  never  fail 

To  walk  the  studious  cloisters  pale, 

And  love  the  high  embowed  roof 

With  antic  pillars  massy  proof, 

And  storied  windows  richly  dight 

Casting  a  dim,  religious  light. 

There  let  the  pealing  organ  blow 

To  the  full-voiced  quire  below, 

In  service  high  and  anthem  clear, 

As  may  with  sweetness,  through  mine  ear, 

Dissolve  me  into  ecstasies, 

And  bring  all  heaven  before  mine  eyes. 

Comus  was  written  to  be  performed  as  a  masque 
on  Michaelmas  night,  1634,  at  Ludlow  Castle  : 


72  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

for  the  Roundheads  had  not  yet  seized  power 
and  banned  theatrical  entertainments.  The 
splendid  Lycidas,  composed  in  1637,  was  one 
of  thirty-six  elegies,  most  of  them  extremely 
bad,  in  which  thirty-six  poets  bewailed  the 
death  of  one  Edward  King  who  had  been 
drowned  on  the  way  to  Ireland. 

In  the  spring  of  1638,  Milton  sailed  for  Italy, 
going  to  Rome  by  way  of  Paris,  Nice,  Genoa, 
Leghorn,  and  Pisa.  The  Italians  could  not  read 
his  English  poems  :  but  they  were  not  blind 
to  the  great  merits  of  his  Latin  verses,  and 
Milton  has  himself  preserved  the  memory  of  a 
magnificent  concert  given  by  Cardinal  Barberini, 

who  himself  waiting  at  the  doors  and  seeking  me 
out  in  so  great  a  crowd,  nay,  almost  laying  hold  of  me 
by  the  hand,  admitted  me  within  in  a  truly  most 
honourable  manner. 

In  Florence,  Milton  met  Galileo,  already  blind, 
and  unconsciously  stored  up  a  lesson  of  resigna- 
tion against  the  dark  day  of  his  own  blindness. 
He  also  met  Manso,  the  protector  of  Tasso,  and 
confided  to  him  his  plan  of  an  epic  poem.  In 
sunny,  courtly  Italy,  Milton  intended  that  his 
epic  should  treat  of  King  Arthur  :  but,  as  every- 


JOHN  MILTON  73 

body  knows,  he  altered  his  mind  when  he  set  to 
work  under  the  dour  Commonwealth  and  wrote 
"  of  Man's  first  disobedience  "  instead. 

The  struggle  between  the  King  and  the 
Parliament  would  have  stung  a  warm-blooded 
poet  to  break  out  into  his  most  impassioned 
verse  :  but  poetical  unrest  was  not  congenial  to 
the  sumptuous  deliberateness  of  Milton's  verse- 
making.  For  eighteen  years  he  was  almost 
silent  as  a  poet.  It  is  true  that  he  wrote  the 
very  earnest  sonnet,  beseeching  the  Royalists  to 
pity  a  poor  Parliament-man,  which  runs  : — 

Captain  or  Colonel  or  Knight  in  arms, 

Whose  chance  on  these  defenceless  doors  may  seize, 

***** 

Lift  not  thy  spear  against  the  Muses'  bower. 

But  Milton's  literary  labours,  from  the  finishing 
of  his  Epitaphium  Damonis  in  1639  to  the 
beginning  of  Paradise  Lost  about  1658,  were 
restricted  to  the  educating  of  his  nephews  and 
the  writing  of  pamphlets  and  State-papers. 
Instead  of  giving  the  world  an  Arthurian  poem, 
which  would  have  been  greater  than  Tennyson's, 
he  turned  loose  five  ecclesiastical  pamphlets,  one 


74  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

of  which  bore  the  engaging  title  Animadversions 
upon  the  Remonstrants  Defence  against  Smectymnus. 
Roughly  stated,  Milton's  belief  was  not  in  "  a 
free  Church  in  a  free  State,"  but  in  a  civic  order 
under  which  Church  and  State  would  be  merely 
two  aspects  of  one  body.  Like  other  Puritans 
he  gazed  longingly  back  to  the  theocracy  of  the 
Children  of  Israel  which  had  ended  under  the 
prophet  Samuel.  The  Church  was  to  be  the 
State,  the  State  the  Church  ;  and,  to  realize  this 
ideal  the  Church  was  to  be  purged  of  bishops, 
and  the  State  relieved  of  kings.  As  for  the 
arguments  in  these  pamphlets  of  Milton's  they 
were  admirably  adapted  to  convince  those 
readers  who  agreed  with  him  already. 

The  Civil  War  broke  out  in  1642.  For 
sixteen  years  Milton  had  been  receiving  interest 
on  a  loan  of  ^500  which  he  or  his  father  had 
made  to  an  Oxfordshire  squire,  Richard  Powell. 
The  creditor  was  a  Roundhead,  the  debtor  a 
Cavalier.  It  has  been  suggested  that,  owing  to 
the  war,  an  instalment  of  interest  became  over- 
due :  but  this  is  no  more  than  a  guess.  The 
certain  fact  is  that  at  Whitsuntide,  1643,  Milton 
mounted  a  horse  and  rode  off  through  the 


JOHN  MILTON  75 

hawthorn    and    the    buttercups    to    his    debtor's 
house. 

There  is  something  wrong  with  any  man,  be 
he  chimney-sweep  or  poet,  who  reaches  the  age 
of  thirty-five — exactly  half  his  three-score  and 
ten — without  having  fallen  in  love.  When 
Milton  set  out  for  Oxfordshire,  he  was  in  his 
thirty-fifth  year  :  and,  although  he  had  paid  a 
Latin  compliment  or  two  in  Italy,  love  seemed 
to  have  passed  him  by.  Unhappily  marriage 
does  not  always  mean  love  :  and  the  amazing 
marriage  of  Milton  involved  love  on  neither 
side.  Within  a  month  of  his  departure  from 
town,  he  was  back  among  his  astonished  house- 
hold in  Aldersgate  Street  with  a  bride — Mary 
Powell,  the  daughter  of  his  debtor,  a  girl  of 
seventeen.  The  husband,  who  was  almost  old 
enough  to  be  her  father,  seems  to  have  chilled 
and  repelled  the  poor  child  from  the  outset. 
Milton's  nephew,  Phillips,  who  lived  with  the 
pair  and  knew  all  about  it,  says  : — 

By  that  time  she  had  for  a  month  or  thereabouts 
led  a  philosophical  life  (after  having  been  used  to 
a  great  house  and  much  company  and  joviality),  her 
friends,  possibly  incited  by  her  own  desire,  made 


76  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

earnest  suit  by  letters  to  have  her  company  the 
remaining  part  of  the  summer,  which  was  granted 
on  condition  of  her  return  at  the  time  appointed, 
Michaelmas  or  thereabouts.  Michaelmas  being  come 
and  no  news  of  his  wife's  return  he  sent  for  her 
by  letter,  and  receiving  no  answer  sent  several  other 
letters  which  were  also  unanswered,  so  that  at  last  he 
despatched  down  a  foot-messenger  :  but  the  messenger 
came  back  without  an  answer.  He  thought  it  would 
be  dishonourable  ever  to  receive  her  again  after  such 
a  repulse. 

Phillips  goes  on  to  state  that  it  was  this  bad 
faith  at  Michaelmas  which  goaded  Milton  into 
writing  his  two  tracts  on  The  Doctrine  and 
Discipline  of  Divorce.  But  Masson,  the  poet's 
best  biographer,  has  discovered  that  the  true  story 
is  more  painful  still.  He  has  shown  that  the  first 
of  the  tracts  on  divorce  was  written  in  July, 
only  a  month  after  the  wedding. 

To  shatter  generous  illusions  is  sorry  work. 
But  the  truth  must  be  told.  And  the  truth 
is  that  the  bright  fountains  of  Milton's  pleas 
for  Liberty  are  poisoned  at  their  source  by 
opportunism  and  self-interest.  He  championed 
divorce  in  general  because  he  wished  to  be  rid 
of  Mary  Powell  in  particular.  As  for  his 
famous  Areopagitica^  the  best  of  all  his  prose 


JOHN  MILTON  77 

writings,  this  eloquent  appeal  for  the  Freedom 
of  the  Press  was  evoked  by  the  disfavour  with 
which  the  Presbyterian  censorship  looked  at  its 
author's  own  tracts  on  divorce.  In  troublous 
times,  when  the  greater  swallows  up  the  less,  too 
much  must  not  be  made  of  the  inconsistencies 
of  public  men  :  but,  when  all  due  allowances 
have  been  made,  it  remains  a  blot  on  Milton's 
fame  that,  within  seven  years  of  writing  his 
Areopagitica,  he  became  himself  a  paid  censor  ; 
and  also  that,  when  he  was  himself  profiting  by 
toleration  under  the  restored  Stuarts,  one  of  his 
latest  writings  was  directed  against  the  extension 
of  toleration  to  a  body  whose  religious  tenets 
he  did  not  approve. 

For  two  years  the  truant  bride  remained  in 
Oxfordshire  without  either  side  holding  out  the 
smallest  sprig  of  olive.  Meanwhile  Milton's 
school  was  enlarged  and  his  old  father  came  to 
keep  the  deserted  husband  company.  Apparently 
the  champion  of  divorce  was  prepared  to  practise 
what  he  preached  :  for  he  began  openly  courting 
Miss  Davis,  "  a  very  witty  and  handsome  gentle- 
woman." But  the  guns  at  Naseby  happily  blew 
the  witty  and  handsome  gentlewoman's  chance 


78  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

away.  King  Charles  was  finally  beaten  :  and,  a 
month  or  so  later,  Mary  reappeared  "  making 
submission  and  begging  pardon  on  her  knees." 
It  is  a  bright  and  honourable  page  in  Milton's 
life  which  records  how  he  was  reconciled  with 
the  runaway  even  to  the  extent  of  giving  shelter 
to  her  family  after  the  fall  of  Oxford  the 
following  year.  Oxford  surrendered  in  June  ; 
and  in  July  Milton's  eldest  daughter  was 
born. 

After  the  beheading  of  the  King,  which  Milton 
supported,  the  poet's  progress  in  worldly  pros- 
perity was  rapid.  At  a  salary  equal  to  ^900  a 
year  of  our  money,  he  acted  as  Latin  secretary 
in  Cromwell's  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs,  and 
also  as  censor  of  the  Press.  He  enjoyed  the  use 
of  a  suite  of  rooms  in  Whitehall  Palace.  When 
the  immense  success  of  the  mysterious  book 
Eikon  Basitike  began  to  cause  a  reaction  in  the 
dead  King's  favour,  it  was  Milton  who  was 
deputed  by  the  nervous  Council  of  State  to 
write  Eikonoklastes  in  answer.  Again,  when  the 
learned  Salmasius  denounced  the  regicides,  it 
was  Milton  who  made  the  official  retort.  Un- 
fortunately the  retort  fell  below  the  dignity  of 


JOHN  MILTON  79 

the  occasion.  For  example,  to  taunt  Salmasius 
with  enduring  a  shrewish  wife  was  hardly  an 
argument  for  cutting  off  the  head  of  a  king. 
But  personalities  are  livelier  than  logic,  and 
accordingly  Milton's  pamphlet  had  an  immense 
popular  success. 

In  March,  1652,  darkness  sealed  the  poet's 
eyes.  By  this  time  three  more  children  had 
been  born  to  him  :  and,  in  the  following  May, 
his  wife  died.  It  was  out  of  the  depths  of 
these  griefs  that  Milton  uttered  the  noble  and 
beautiful  sonnet  On  His  Blindness, 

With  Oliver  Cromwell  John  Milton  stood 
well.  Coadjutors  were  appointed,  and  he  retained 
his  official  post.  In  1656,  he  married  Katherine 
Woodcock,  "  a  captain's  daughter "  ;  but  both 
Katherine  and  her  babe  died  in  1658.  Two 
years  later  came  the  Restoration,  and  Milton 
went  into  hiding  in  Bartholomew  Close,  Smith- 
field.  But  the  only  vengeance  pronounced 
against  him  was  the  public  burning  of  his  books 
against  Charles  the  First :  and,  with  a  reduced 
but  still  ample  income,  the  ex-Secretary  to  the 
Commonwealth  was  able  to  live  out  his  remain- 
ing fourteen  years  in  safety  and  in  comfort. 


8o  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

During  the  Plague  he  dwelt  at  Chalfont  St. 
Giles,  where  his  cottage  still  stands. 

Paradise  Lost  was  begun  in  1658  and  ended 
in  1663.  For  years  after  dropping  the  idea  of 
King  Arthur  the  poet  had  been  casting  about  for 
a  subject  and  had  wavered  among  ninety-nine 
themes,  of  which  sixty-one  were  Scriptural  and 
thirty-eight  legendary  or  historical.  He  also 
hesitated  between  the  dramatic  and  the  epic 
forms  before  he  decided  upon  a  didactic  epic  "  to 
justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man."  The  poem 
was  dictated  to  his  younger  daughters,  who  were 
often  aroused  in  the  dead  of  night  to  write  down 
the  new-made  lines. 

The  relations  of  Milton  with  these  poor 
scribes  of  his  own  flesh  and  blood  make  wretched 
reading.  Despite  his  tract  on  Education,  the 
eldest  daughter  was  not  taught  even  to  write  her 
name.  The  others  were  trained  to  read  Latin, 
Greek,  and  Hebrew  aloud  ;  but  beyond  pronounc- 
ing the  sounds,  they  had  no  suspicion  of  their 
meaning.  When  Milton  died,  he  left  his 
daughters  nothing,  on  the  ground  that  he  had 
done  enough  for  them  already.  Turning  to  the 
other  side,  it  is  said  that  the  girls  hated  their 


JOHN  MILTON  81 

father  and  that  they  sold  off  book  after  book 
from  his  library  to  a  rag-wife  for  pocket-money. 
It  is  pleasant  to  know  that  Milton's  third  wife,  a 
golden-haired  Cheshire  lass,  thirty  years  his 
junior,  whom  he  had  married  in  1663,  resigned  a 
portion  of  the  estate  to  her  step-daughters  after  a 
little  pressure :  and,  also,  that  Deborah  Milton  was 
cared  for  in  her  old  age  by  Johnson  and  Addison 
and  the  Princess  Caroline,  for  poetry's  sake. 

Paradise  Lost  was  sold  to  Samuel  Symmons  in 
1667  on  terms  which  ensured  to  the  author  £5 
for  each  of  the  first  three  impressions,  an 
impression  counting  1300  copies.  Milton  him- 
self received  j£io,  and  his  widow  sold  her 
interest  for.  ^"8.  In  defence  of  Samuel  Symmons 
it  must  be  remembered  that  if  a  poet  of  the 
present  day  ventured  to  take  to  a  publisher  the 
MS.  of  an  epic  as  good,  as  long,  and  as  serious 
as  Paradise  Lost  he  would  be  shown  the  door. 

Despite  its  Arian  doctrine,  and  despite  the 
fact  that  Satan  is  the  real  hero  of  the  epic, 
Paradise  Lost  was  passed  by  the  Archbishop's 
censor,  a  personage  with  the  unepical  name  of 
Thomas  Tomkyns,  and  it  began  to  make  its 
way  in  the  world.  As  an  example  of  Christian 

7 


82  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

apologetics,  its  day  has  worn  to  twilight :  but, 
for  that  very  reason,  its  starry  beauties  are 
shining  out  more  brightly.  Among  poets,  there 
is  not  one  who  loves  it  :  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
there  is  not  one  who  does  not  respect  it,  marvel 
at  it,  and  learn  from  it.  Its  music  is  nearly 
always  as  grand  as  the  organ  on  which  the  blind 
poet  played  ;  and,  now  and  again,  it  is  as  sweet 
as  the  piping  of  birds.  Considered  technically, 
as  a  prolonged  exercise  in  blank  verse,  it  is  one 
of  the  wonders  of  the  poets'  world.  But  it  is 
not  astir,  as  such  an  epic  should  be,  with  life — 
life  temporal  and  life  eternal — and  it  is  not 
aglow  with  love — love  human  and  love  divine. 
As  for  Paradise  Regained,  although  Wordsworth 
and  Coleridge  ranked  it  above  Paradise  Lost,  it  is 
chillier  and  tamer  still.  In  short,  Mark  Pattison's 
verdict  on  Paradise  Lost  as  "  the  elaborate  outcome 
of  all  the  best  words  of  all  antecedent  poetry  " 
is  a  sound  verdict,  and  "  elaborate  "  is  a  good,  a 
true  and  a  good,  word.  Yet,  in  treating  of  its 
author,  one  cannot  fairly  close  upon  a  grudging 
note.  We  may  make  vast  reservations,  and  yet 
say  of  Milton,  with  Goethe,  "  He  is  very  great." 


JOHN  DRYDEN 

"•QRYDEN  found  English  of  brick  and  left 
it  of  marble,"  said  Dr.  Johnson.  The 
saying  has  been  laughed  at  on  the  ground 
that  the  bricks  included  Hamlet  and  Othello 
— monuments  beside  which  the  costliest  of 
Dryden's  marbles  are  of  no  more  worth  than 
a  heap  of  cracked  pots.  Nevertheless  Johnson 
spoke  the  truth.  English  as  Dryden  found  it 
was  not  the  English  of  Shakespeare  :  for  the 
Puritan  epoch  had  intervened,  and  Shakespeare's 
natural  influence  upon  literature  had  been 
largely  thwarted.  It  was  not  even  the  English 
of  Milton  ;  for  the  warm  and  licentious  Restor- 
ation had  swamped  the  chilly  decorum  of  the 
Commonwealth.  Besides,  when  Dryden  emerged 
as  a  full-fledged  poet,  Paradise  Lost  lay  still 
unpublished  and  Milton's  known  poems  did 
not  overflow  one  slender  volume.  The  English 
which  held  the  field  was,  in  the  main,  brick 

83 


84  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

indeed — rudely-shaped,  half-baked  clay,  of  the 
earth  earthy.  It  is  the  glory  of  Dryden  that  he 
gripped  our  literary  language  when  it  was  on  the 
headlong  road  to  degeneration  and  restored  its 
form  and  comeliness  and  self-respect.  Under 
Pope,  Dryden's  great  disciple,  it  is  true  that 
poetry  became  so  marble-stiff  and  marble-cold 
that  it  had  to  be  snatched  out  of  the  flawless  and 
crystal-clear  and  shining  but  death-dealing  ice 
by  the  eager  hands  of  Chatterton  and  Blake  and 
Coleridge  and  the  Romanticists.  But  the  fact 
abides  that  Dryden  saved  our  poetry  and  directed 
its  course  for  a  hundred  years.  We  may  be 
sorry  that  he  and  his  successors  sent  the  bright 
stream  along  channels  as  formal  as  Dutch  canals  : 
but,  without  Dryden's  embankments,  the  flood 
would  probably  have  leaked  and  oozed  and 
spread  over  an  evil  swamp,  and  the  century  after 
Milton,  like  the  century  after  Chaucer,  would 
have  been  barren  of  poetry  and  fertile  only  in 
the  rude  songs  and  ballads  of  mere  versifiers. 

Dryden  was  born  at  the  vicarage  of  Aldwinkle 
All  Saints,  in  Northamptonshire,  on  9th  August, 
1631.  His  native  house  still  stands  :  and  from 
Aldwinkle  village  one  can  still  look  at  a  grand 


JOHN  DRYDEN  85 

cedar  which  was  planted  two  years  before  the 
poet  was  born.  The  slow  and  fishful  Nene,  in 
which  Dryden  learned  a  love  of  angling  which 
he  never  lost,  flows  through  the  wooded  vale. 
Near  at  hand  stood  the  mound  of  Fotheringhay  : 
but  Dryden  never  mentions  either  the  castle  or 
Mary  Stuart  in  his  poems,  although  he  became 
poet-laureate  to  a  Stuart  King  and  died  in 
dogged  disapproval  of  William  and  Mary. 

Westminster  School  and  Cambridge  gave 
Dryden  the  education  which  he  was  to  put  to 
good  account  in  his  great  version  of  the  whole 
work  of  Virgil.  But,  like  Milton,  he  failed  to 
love  Cambridge,  as  appears  from  the  lines  : — 

Oxford  to  him  a  dearer  name  shall  be 
Than  his  own  mother  university  ; 
Thebes  did  his  green  unknowing  youth  engage, 
He  chooses  Athens  in  his  riper  age. 

At  Canons  Ashby,  in  a  delicious  house  which 
still  belongs  to  the  family,  dwelt  Honor  Driden, 
daughter  of  Sir  John  Driden,  the  poet's  uncle. 
To  this  cousin  Honor — who  never  married — 
young  John  Dryden  addressed  an  ardent  and 
gallant  epistle  which  is  still  in  existence.  It  has 
been  assumed  that  here  was  a  tragedy  of  hopeless 


86  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

love  on  both  sides,  with  the  greedy  and  heartless 
Sir  John  in  the  role  of  the  stern  parent.  The 
supposed  suitor  was  already  about  twenty-four 
years  old,  and  the  fortune  which  had  just  fallen  to 
him  on  the  death  of  his  father  brought  in  an  income 
of  no  more  than  ^200  at  the  present  value  of 
money.  Again,  Sir  John  was  a  thorough-going 
Parliamentarian,  while  his  nephew,  despite  his 
Puritan  parentage  and  his  trimming  Heroic  Stanzas 
on  the  death  of  Cromwell,  was  probably  all  along 
a  Royalist  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart.  For  either, 
or  both,  or  neither  of  these  reasons  :  or  for  some 
others  ;  or  for  none  at  all  ;  the  ardent  and  gallant 
epistle  proved  to  be  a  mere  flash  in  the  pan. 

With  the  baser  sort  of  biographers  it  seems 
to  have  become  a  principle  that  every  genuine 
English  poet  must  have  been  short  of  money 
and  unhappily  married.  Certain  literary  historians 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  led  by  the  partisan 
Macaulay,  have  chosen  to  blacken  the  picture  of 
Dryden's  domestic  life,  and,  on  the  strength  (or 
weakness)  of  evidence  on  which  one  would  not 
hang  a  dog,  the  widely-read  John  Richard  Green 
has  flung  broadcast  the  deplorable  statement, 
"  Dryden's  life  was  that  of  a  libertine,  and  his 


JOHN  DRYDEN. 

After  the  Portrait  engraved  by  C.  E.   Wagstafi. 


JOHN  DRYDEN  87 

marriage  with  a  woman  who  was  yet  more 
dissolute  than  himself  only  gave  a  new  spur  to 
his  debaucheries." 

Dryden  was  married,  at  the  end  of  the  year 
1663,  to  Lady  Elizabeth  Howard,  eldest  daughter 
of  the  Earl  of  Berkshire.  The  worst  that  is 
known  against  this  "  woman  more  dissolute  than 
himself"  is  the  fact  that,  before  her  marriage,  she 
wrote  a  letter  to  the  Earl  of  Chesterfield  into 
which  it  is  possible  to  read  hints  of  a  flirtation. 
After  the  marriage,  she  lived  with  her  husband 
until  his  death  thirty-seven  years  afterwards. 
Her  three  boys  were  well  brought  up  and  became 
men  of  religious  mind  ;  and  an  ill-spelt  but 
long  and  motherly  postscript  which  she  added  to 
a  letter  written  by  Dryden  to  his  sons  breathes 
of  domestic  unity  and  goodwill.  As  for  Dryden 
himself,  the  "  debaucheries "  hardly  come  up  to 
expectations.  The  most  frightful  of  them  is  his 
eating  of  tarts  with  a  friend  and  "  with  Madam 
Reeve  at  the  Mulberry  Garden."  Madam  Reeve 
was  a  famous  actress  ;  the  friend  appears  to  have 
been  the  manager,  Southern  ;  and  Dryden  him- 
self, the  third  of  the  shameless  tart-eaters,  did 
practically  nothing  for  fifteen  years  beyond 


88  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

writing  stage-plays.  If  one  is  to  brand  Dryden 
as  a  libertine  on  such  a  ground  as  this,  one  must 
call  every  modern  playwright  who  lunches  after 
a  rehearsal  with  an  actor-manager  and  his  leading 
lady  an  infamous  wastrel  unfit  for  decent  society. 
It  is  necessary  to  go  into  this  matter  of 
Dryden's  alleged  vileness  and  dishonour  because 
the  defaming  of  his  character  has  led  to  the 
neglect  of  his  verse.  The  neglect  of  his  plays 
is  less  regrettable  ;  because  although  they  contain 
fine  work,  lyrical,  dramatical,  and  purely  poetical, 
they  are  defiled  by  the  coarseness  with  which  the 
Restoration  playwrights,  however  estimable  their 
private  characters,  thought  it  necessary  to  strew 
their  writings.  But  the  poetry  is  too  dis- 
tinguished in  itself  and  too  far-reaching  in  its 
influence  to  be  passed  by.  In  the  course  of  his 
long  life,  Dryden  attempted  almost  all  the  known 
forms  of  poetical  composition,  and  in  none  of 
them  did  he  fail.  And  he  is  hardly  ever  tiresome. 
Too  many  of  the  great  poets,  like  Words- 
worth in  the  Prelude^  have  been  great  bores. 
But  Dryden  has  as  many  points  as  couplets.  His 
under-rated  sEncid  is  easier  to  read  through  than 
The  FaSrie  Queen  or  Paradise  Lost. 


JOHN  DRYDEN  89 

Astr<ea  Redux,  the  poem  in  which  Dryden 
hailed  the  returning  Stuarts,  was  written  in  1660. 
In  1667  came  Annus  Mirabilis,  written  not  in 
couplets  but  in  quatrains.  Here  are  some  of 
the  verses  describing  the  small  beginning  of  the 
Great  Fire  : — 

Then  in  some  close-pent  room  it  crept  along 

And,  smouldering  as  it  went,  in  silence  fed  : 
Till  the  infant  monster,  with  devouring  strong, 

Walked  boldly  upright  with  exalted  head. 
Now,  like  some  rich  and  mighty  murderer, 

Too  great  for  prison  which  he  breaks  with  gold, 
Who  fresher  for  new  mischief  doth  appear 

And  dares  the  world  to  tax  him  with  the  old, 
So  'scapes  the  insulting  fire  his  narrow  jail. 

The  words  "  in  silence  fed  "  were  surely  written 
by  a  poet  of  more  than  academical  interest. 
But,  after  completing  Annus  Mirabilis^  Dryden 
deserted  poetry  for  the  theatre  and  did  not 
return  to  it  until  he  was  fifty  years  old.  The 
theatre  brought  him  both  bitters  and  sweets. 
There  were  the  inevitable  quarrels  with  actors 
and  rivals  :  his  works  were  parodied  ;  and  one  of 
the  duels  of  satire  ended  in  Dryden's  being  most 
unjustifiably  beaten  in  a  dark  alley  by  the  hired 
ruffians  of  a  rake  and  a  coward.  On  the  other 


90  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

hand  he  lived  comfortably  in  the  house  in 
Gerrard  Street,  Soho,  which  may  still  be  traced 
by  an  inscribed  medallion  ;  he  was  made  Poet- 
laureate  and  Historiographer-royal  with  a  salary  of 
£100  a  year  and  a  butt  of  sack  ;  and  his  annual 
income  rose  to  as  much  as  ^"3000  of  to-day's 
money. 

Absalom  and  Achitophel,  the  satire  with  which, 
in  1 68 1,  Dryden  came  out  of  the  theatre,  is 
remarkable  in  more  ways  than  one.  The  amazing 
technical  cleverness  of  its  couplets  gave  to  the 
satirists  of  the  eighteenth  century  their  ideal 
form  :  while  the  cool  spirit  of  the  work  is  as  far 
from  the  superheated  spirit  of  the  bullying  and 
swashbuckling  satires  of  Dryden's  predecessors 
as  the  Poles  are  from  the  Equator.  Again,  the 
poems  show  that  its  author  was  not  a  mere 
literary  man,  but  that  he  could  take  up  poetry 
like  a  trumpet  and  blow  forth  battlecries  and 
oracles  on  the  living  questions  of  the  hour. 
Absalom  and  Achitophel  dealt  with  the  Popish  Plot  : 
and  its  successors,  The  Medal^  MacFlecknoe,  and 
Religio  Laid,  all  traversed  the  highways  and  by- 
ways of  the  same  burning  business. 

The  satires  hugely  enlarged  Dryden's  fame  : 


JOHN  DRYDEN  91 

but  his  income  began  to  dwindle.  Disputes  with 
the  players  had  cut  off  the  profits  of  play-writing, 
and  the  Treasury  was  £1000  in  arrears  with  his 
salary  as  Poet-laureate.  By  way  of  solatium, 
Dryden  was  appointed  to  a  Collectorship  of 
Customs — an  office  which  Chaucer  had  filled 
three  hundred  years  before — but  the  meridian  of 
his  prosperity  had  been  passed. 

The  Hind  and  the  Panther^  Dryden's  next 
considerable  poem,  was  the  first-fruits  of  his 
conversion  to  Roman  Catholicism.  The  poet's 
detractors  have  found  in  his  change  of  faith 
nothing  better  than  contemptible  hypocrisy  and 
time-serving.  Forgetting  the  fact  that  the  over- 
whelming majority  of  Englishmen  did  the  same, 
his  judges  bring  it  up  against  him  that  he  had 
already  turned  his  coat  once  when  he  deserted 
the  Puritans  to  welcome  Charles  the  Second  in 
1660.  Dryden's  sincerity  in  surrendering  to  the 
claims  of  the  ancient  religion  is  best  tested  by 
the  sacrifices  he  made  for  his  principles.  Through 
refusing  to  retrace  his  ecclesiastical  steps  and 
to  take  the  oaths  to  William  and  Mary  he 
lost  all  his  emoluments  and  offices  under  the 
Crown.  He  drank  down  to  the  dregs  of  a  deep 


9*  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

and  bitter  cup  when  he  saw  the  laureateship 
pass  to  Shadwell,  a  wretched  creature  who  was 
the  first  to  set  afloat  the  scurrilities  about  Dryden 
which  linger  to  this  day,  and  so  mean  a  poet  that, 
as  early  as  1682,  Dryden  had  written  : — 

The  rest  to  some  faint  meaning  make  pretence, 
But  Shadwell  nerer  deviates  into  sense. 

Further,  two  of  his  sons  were  prevented  by  their 
change  of  religion  from  availing  themselves  of 
scholarships  which  they  had  gained  at  the  Uni- 
versities. Nor  was  Dryden's  steadfastness  short- 
lived. Eleven  years  after  the  Revolution  and 
only  a  year  before  his  death  he  wrote  to  a  friend : — 

The  Court  rather  speaks  kindly  of  me  than  does 
anything  for  me,  though  they  promise  largely,  and 
perhaps  they  think  I  will  advance  as  they  go  backward, 
in  which  they  will  be  much  deceived;  for  I  can  never 
go  -an  inch  beyond  my  conscience  and  my  honour. 
If  they  will  consider  me  as  a  man  who  has  done  my 
best  to  improve  the  language,  and  especially  the 
poetry,  and  will  be  content  with  my  acquiescence 
under  the  present  government  and  forbearing  satire  on 
it,  that  I  can  promise,  because  I  can  perform  it :  but 
I  can  neither  take  the  oaths  nor  forsake  my  religion. 

"  Forbearing  satire,"  Dryden  was  forced  to  write 
hard  for  a  living  in  other  forms  of  verse.  If  it 


"THE  REJECTED  POET." 

(POPE   AND    "WORTLEY.  ') 

(After  W.  B.  Frith,  K.A.) 


JOHN  DRYDEN  93 

were  true  that  he  had  lived  a  dissolute  life,  the 
miracle  of  his  last  decade  would  become  almost 
incredible.  Losing  nearly  all  his  income  when  he 
was  close  upon  sixty  years  old,  Dryden  set  to  work 
and  produced  in  ten  years  more  verses  than 
Gray  and  Coleridge  and  Keats,  added  together, 
produced  in  their  whole  lives.  Nor  was  the  verse 
slovenly  or  dull.  It  included  the  really  fine 
plays,  Don  Sebastian  and  Amphitryon;  the  opera 
King  Arthur,  which  Purcell  set  to  music  ;  trans- 
lations of  the  whole  of  Persius,  the  whole 
of  Virgil,  a  great  deal  of  Ovid  and  Juvenal, 
and  some  of  Homer,  Horace,  Theocritus,  and 
Lucretius  ;  the  Fables^  containing  versions  of 
Chaucer  and  Boccaccio  :  Alexanders  Feast ;  and 
the  Epistle  to  John  Driden.  The  Fables  and 
translations  do  not  amount  to  less  than  forty 
thousand  lines,  and  are  thus  equal  in  quantity  to 
the  whole  extant  work  of  Homer.  As  for  their 
quality,  it  may  be  tasted  in  the  following  version 
of  an  ode  of  Horace  (the  twenty-ninth  in  the 
third  book).  Dryden's  translation  begins  : — 

Happy  the  man,  and  happy  he  alone, 

He  who  can  call  to-day  his  own  ; 

He  who,  secure  within,  can  say, 

To-morrow  do  thy  worst,  for  I  have  lived  to-day ; 


94  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Be  fair,  or  foul,  or  rain,  or  shine, 

The  joys  I  have  possessed,  in  spite  of  fate,  are  mine ; 

Not  heaven  itself  upon  the  past  has  power, 

But  what  has  been  has  been,  and  I  have  had  my  hour. 

It  ends  with  the  famous  contemning  of  the  Sea 
of  Fortune  whose  gales  are  so  terrifying  to  those 
with  ill-gotten  gains  to  lose  : — 

For  me,  secure  from  fortune's  blows, 
Secure  of  what  I  cannot  lose. 

In  my  small  pinnace  I  can  sail, 
Contemning  all  the  blustering  roar  ; 

And  running  with  a  merry  gale, 
With  friendly  stars  my  safety  seek 
Within  some  little  winding  creek 
And  see  the  storm  ashore. 

Of  Theodore  and  Honoria,  from  Boccaccio,  it  may 
be  soberly  said  that  it  is  incomparably  finer  than 
the  fine  original. 

Dryden's  last  strenuous  years  are  the  more 
amazing  by  reason  of  his  ill-health  and  worries. 
He  had  to  keep  nagging  at  Tonson,  his  publisher, 
on  money  matters.  For  example,  Tonson  had 
changed  some  money  for  Lady  Elizabeth,  and 
"  besides  the  clipped  money  there  were  at  least 
forty  shillings  brass."  Again,  "  If  you  have  any 
silver  which  will  go,  my  wife  will  be  glad  of  it." 
Again,  "  All  of  your  trade  are  sharpers,  and  you 


JOHN  DRYDEN  95 

not  more  than  others."  All  the  same,  the  Virgil 
brought  in  ^"1200  :  and  ^"500  came  from  the 
Earl  of  Abingdon  in  payment  for  an  elegy  on 
his  dead  Countess.  But  no  one  ought  to  grudge 
these  handsome  sums  to  John  Dryden,  who,  in 
his  kindness  of  heart,  never  once  raised  the  rents 
of  his  tenants  during  the  forty-six  years  of 
his  land-owning,  although  rents  all  over  the 
country  were  going  up  by  leaps  and  bounds. 
He  died  on  3<Dth  April,  1700,  and  was  buried  in 
Westminster  Abbey. 

Dryden's  prose  lies  outside  the  scope  of 
this  book.  But  its  clearness  and  swiftness  are 
seen  in  the  following  words  on  Shakespeare  : — 

He  was  the  man  who  of  all  modern,  and  perhaps 
ancient  poets  had  the  largest  and  most  comprehensive 
soul.  All  the  images  of  nature  were  still  present 
to  him,  and  he  drew  them  not  laboriously  but  luckily  : 
when  he  describes  anything,  you  more  than  see  it,  you 
feel  it  too.  Those  who  accuse  him  to  have  wanted 
learning,  give  him  the  greater  commendation  :  he  was 
naturally  learned :  he  needed  not  the  spectacles  of 
books  to  read  nature  :  he  looked  inwards  and  found 
her  there. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  this  praise  of 
Shakespeare  was  uttered  in  1665,  when  Shake- 


96  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

speare  needed  praising  after  Puritan  coldness  and 
amid  Restoration  rudeness.  In  the  same  way, 
Dryden  has  need  of  praise  to-day.  Even  a 
critic  so  habitually  sound  as  Minto  has  hinted 
that  if  Pope  had  not  become  interested  in  Dryden 
on  personal  grounds,  Dryden's  reputation 
would  not  have  endured.  But  Dryden's  vindi- 
cation stands  in  his  work  :  and  whoever  will 
read  it  must  agree  that  his  own  modest  boast  was 
true,  and  that  this  "  man  who  did  his  best  to 
improve  the  language,  and  especially  the  poetry  " 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  was  not  only  a  great 
craftsman  and  a  great  critic  but  a  great  poet  as 
well. 


ALEXANDER  POPE 

is  the  happy  exception  to  the  rule  that 
poets  are  born  not  made.  Just  as  patient 
Carthusian  monks  have  been  known  to  labour 
at  a  burnt  and  stony  hillside  until  it  yields 
brighter  and  larger  fruits  than  any  in  the 
orchards  and  gardens  of  the  fat  plain  ;  so  Pope 
forced  from  the  scanty  and  flinty  patch  of  his 
meagre  poetical  endowment  a  crop  so  fine  and 
so  abundant  as  to  put  many  a  more  richly-gifted 
but  more  indolent  poet  to  shame.  Pope,  in- 
deed, is  the  one  self-made  poet  among  the  first- 
rate  reputations.  He  is  the  man  with  one 
talent  who  made  much  out  of  little,  and  is  the 
opposite  of  the  born-poet  Coleridge,  who  made 
little  out  of  much. 

Pope,  says  Dr.  Johnson, 

was  from  his  birth  of  a  constitution  tender  and 
delicate,  but  is  said  to  have  shown  remarkable  gentle- 
ness and  sweetness  of  disposition.  The  weakness  of 
his  body  continued  through  his  life ;  but  the  mildness 
of  his  mind  perhaps  ended  with  his  childhood. 
G  97 


98  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

So,  too,  undoubtedly  ended  any  serious  educa- 
tion, though  in  this  matter  his  parents  must  not 
be  too  severely  blamed.  For  as  devout  Roman 
Catholics,  living  under  the  Penal  Laws,  they  were 
restricted  and  driven  in  upon  themselves  to  a 
degree  which  it  is  almost  impossible  fully  to 
realize  in  the  present  day. 

Alexander  Pope,  born  in  Lombard  Street,  in 
the  city  of  London,  on  2ist  May,  1688,  where 
his  father  was  a  linen  draper,  received  merely 
desultory  instruction,  from  various  priests,  in 
Latin  and  Greek,  and  a  few  snatches  of  school- 
ing until  the  age  of  twelve,  when  any  further 
education  among  children  of  his  own  age  was 
finally  put  an  end  to  by  his  father's  retiring 
from  business  and  settling  at  Binfield,  in  Berk- 
shire. Here  the  "  little  nightingale,"  as  his 
elderly  and  doting  parents  had  dubbed  him  on 
account  of  his  sweet  voice,  was  set  free  to  flit 
and  peck  and  sing  in  whatever  woods  of  romance 
or  learning  tempted  his  roving  fancy. 

Poetry,  with  its  ardours  and  its  laurels,  was 
his  one  great  ambition,  and  he  confessed  that  it 
was  his  only  business  and  idleness  his  only  plea- 
sure. Indeed,  one  of  his  kinsmen  considered  "it 


ALEXANDER  POPE  99 

was  the  perpetual  application  he  fell  into  in  his 
twelfth  year,  that  changed  his  form  and  ruined  his 
constitution."  But  it  seems  more  probable  that 
the  headaches  and  crooked  figure  which  afflicted 
him  throughout  that  "long  disease  his  life"  were 
inherited  rather  than  acquired. 

There  is  a  pretty  tale  of  the  boy  getting  some 
one  to  smuggle  him  into  the  famous  Wills' 
Coffee  House  that  he  might  see  the  great 
Dryden  —  in  his  coffee-cups,  so  to  speak. 
Whether  the  story  be  true  or  not  the  young 
and  as  yet  unformed  poet  worshipped  Dryden 
as  an  idol,  took  him  for  his  master,  and  declared 
that  he  had  learned  versification  wholly  from  his 
works. 

The  lad  made  literary  friends  in  Berkshire. 
Sir  William  Trumbull  put  him  in  touch  with 
the  French  literary  criticism  of  the  day,  and 
suggested  both  the  poem  of  Windsor  Forest  and 
the  translation  of  Homer.  Another  friend, 
Englefield,  served  him  more  questionably  by 
introducing  him  to  Wycherley  and  Harry  Crom- 
well, two  hoary  sinners  who  had  outlived  their 
brother  wits  and  fops  of  the  Restoration.  The 
friendship  hardly  tended  to  elevate  the  already 


ioo     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

worldly  and  cynical  mind  of  the  precocious 
youth  who  was  yearning  to  be  done  with  Binfield 
and  to  blossom  out  as  a  man  about  town. 

Wycherley  showed  Pope's  verses  to  Walsh, 
then  of  great  renown  as  a  critic,  who  was 
astonished  at  their  quality.  Thus,  before  he 
was  seventeen,  Pope  had  been  admitted  to  the 
intimacy  of  wits  and  men  of  fashion,  was  form- 
ing friendships  with  such  notables  as  Swift, 
Steele,  and  Addison,  and  had  the  delight  of  see- 
ing his  verses  discussed  and  handled  and  admired 
by  most  of  the  leading  literary  men  of  his  day. 

The  first  of  his  productions  to  appear  in  print 
was  his  Pastorals  in  1709,  when  Pope  was  twenty- 
one.  His  Essay  on  Criticism  followed  two  years 
later,  and  Windsor  Forest  was  finished  and  pub- 
lished in  March,  1713. 

The  poetry  of  the  eighteenth  century  as  we 
get  it  in  Pope's  Pastorals  is  as  pompous  and 
artificial  as  a  Versailles  gallery,  set  with  gilded 
chairs.  It  has  no  genuine  touch  with  nature. 
Its  breezes  are  "  soft  gales,"  its  green  grass, 
"  verdant  lawns,"  and  the  inhabitants  of  its 
pretty  world  of  patch  and  powder  are  shepherds, 
love-sick  swains,  Floras,  Phillidas,  Silvias,  and 


ALEXANDER  POPE  101 

nymphs  and  fauns.  It  is  the  same  spirit  of 
affectation  which  reared  the  Trianon  and  set  the 
court  at  Versailles  masquerading  with  picture 
hats  and  be-ribboned  crooks.  Yet  such  poetry 
can  have  its  emotion  and  its  charm  for  all  sym- 
pathetic readers,  though  being,  as  it  is,  founded 
on  a  sham  it  can  never  rank  with  the  most 
beautiful  and  true  in  the  genuine  outbursts  of 
the  lyrical  poets.  This  quotation  from  the 
Pastorals  shows  Pope  tuning  his  artificial  pipe 
with  the  prettiest  grace,  so  that  the  four  words 
"  not  showers  to  larks,"  like  clear  bells,  seem  to 
call  up  all  the  blue-and-white  sweetness  of  an 
April  morning. 

Go,  gentle  gales,  and  bear  my  sighs  along ! 
The  birds  shall  cease  to  tune  their  evening  song, 
The  winds  to  breathe,  the  waving  woods  to  move, 
And  streams  to  murmur  ere  I  cease  to  love. 
Not  bubbling  fountains  to  the  thirsty  swain, 
Not  balmy  sweets  to  lab'rers  faint  with  pain, 
Not  showers  to  larks,  not  sunshine  to  the  bee, 
Are  half  so  charming  as  thy  sight  to  me. 

Pope's  generally  acknowledged  masterpiece  is 
The  Rape  of  the  Lock,  first  published  in  1712, 
and  republished,  as  we  now  have  it,  in  1714. 
Lord  Petre  had  stolen  a  curl  from  the  pretty 


102     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

head  of  Miss  Fermor.  The  young  woman  took 
great  umbrage  at  what  she  considered  an  affront, 
and  there  was  unpleasantness  between  the  two 
families.  Pope's  friend,  Caryll,  suggested  to  the 
poet  that  it  would  make  a  good  subject  for  a 
mock-heroic  poem,  which  by  turning  the  affair 
into  pleasant  ridicule  might  afford  a  means  of 
reconciliation  between  these  eighteenth -century 
Montagues  and  Capulets.  This  is  how  Pope  de- 
scribes the  peer's  fateful  act  of  severing  the  lock 
from  Belinda's  head,  and  the  terrible  moments 
which  followed  the  deed  : — 

The  peer  now  spreads  the  glittering  forfex  wide, 
T'  inclose  the  lock  ;  now  joins  it  to  divide. 
E'en  then,  before  the  fatal  engine  clos'd, 
A  wretched  sylph  too  fondly  interpos'd ; 
Fate  urg'd  the  shears,  and  cut  the  sylph  in  twain, 
(But  airy  substance  soon  unites  again). 
The  meeting  points  the  sacred  hair  dissever 
From  the  fair  head,  for  ever,  and  for  ever ! 
Then  flash'd  the  living  lightning  from  her  eyes, 
And  screams  of  horror  rent  th'  affrighted  skies. 
Not  louder  shrieks  to  pitying  Heaven  are  cast, 
When  husbands,  or  when  lapdogs  breathe  their  last ; 
Or  when  rich  China  vessels,  fall'n  from  high, 
In  glittering  dust  and  painted  fragments  lie  ! 

But  this  mock-heroic  poem  was  only  the  pre- 
lude to  a  serio-heroic  one  which  was  to  make 


ALEXANDER  POPE  103 

Pope's  fame  and  fortune.  The  translation  of 
Homer's  7//W,  by  subscription,  was  undertaken 
between  the  years  1715-20  ;  a  translation  of  the 
Odyssey ',  less  successful,  because  it  was  "  farmed 
out"  to  inferior  hands,  appeared  in  1725  and 
the  following  years.  From  the  two  ventures 
Pope  received  profits  amounting  to  nearly 
^9000 — a  larger  sum  than  had  ever  been,  or 
probably  ever  will  be  again,  received  in  such 
circumstances  by  an  English  poet. 

By  this  time,  Pope's  father  was  dead.  With 
his  new-made  fortune  Pope  bought  the  villa 
at  Twickenham,  whither  he  removed  with  his 
widowed  mother.  Here,  save  for  occasional 
visits,  Pope  spent  the  remainder  of  his  days, 
amongst  lovely  scenery  and  congenial  friendships. 

Pope's  relations  with  the  three  women  asso- 
ciated with  his  name,  like  his  literary  quarrels, 
are  full  of  mystification — a  mystification  which 
Pope  loved  to  create  about  himself,  and  which 
he  most  freely  indulged  by  tampering  with  his 
earlier  correspondence  in  later  life,  as  it  suited 
his  own  ends,  and  by  straying  sometimes  from 
the  path  of  truth  in  his  accounts  of  his  family 
and  of  his  early  literary  productions. 


io4     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

His  sincerest  affection  seems  to  have  been 
expended  upon  the  brilliant  and  fascinating 
Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu.  With  this 
sprightly  lady  he  maintained  a  correspondence 
after  she  had  left  England  with  her  husband 
for  the  embassy  in  Constantinople.  When  she 
again  settled  in  England  (separated  from  her 
husband,  but  with  no  open  quarrel),  she  took 
a  house  in  Twickenham  and  renewed  her  ac- 
quaintance with  the  now  famous  man.  The 
poet  wrote  her  gallant  letters,  and  induced 
Kneller,  the  court  painter,  another  of  the  many 
famous  people  attracted  to  the  lovely  neigh- 
bourhood of  Twickenham,  to  paint  her  portrait. 

Then  came  a  breach.  The  why  and  where- 
fore has  been  hotly  discussed,  but  there  is  no 
reasonable  doubt  that  Lady  Mary's  account  of 
the  affair  is  correct.  She  has  explained  that 
"  at  some  ill-chosen  time,  when  she  least  ex- 
pected what  romancers  call  a  declaration,  he 
made  such  passionate  love  to  her  as,  in  spite 
of  her  utmost  endeavours  to  be  angry  and  look 
grave,  provoked  an  immoderate  fit  of  laughter, 
from  which  moment  he  became  her  implacable 
enemy." 


ALEXANDER  POPE  105 

That  Pope  was  deeply  smitten  at  this  time 
with  Lady  Mary  is  plainly  shown  by  the  deli- 
cate and  feeling  poem  which  he  had  sent  to  Gay; 
but  after  his  rebuff  he  took  his  revenge,  as 
always  with  his  enemies,  in  cruel  and  often 
unpardonable  and  coarse  satire,  which  he  never 
scrupled  to  put  into  cold  print. 

In  1720,  Lady  Mary  wrote  from  Twickenham 
to  her  sister  in  Paris  : — 

I  see  sometimes  Mr.  Congreve,  and  very  seldom 
Mr.  Pope ;  who  continues  to  embellish  his  house  at 
Twickenham.  He  has  made  a  subterranean  grotto, 
which  he  has  furnished  with  looking-glasses,  and  they 
tell  tne,  it  has  a  very  good  effect.  I  send  you  here 
some  verses  addressed  to  Mr.  Gay,  who  wrote  him 
a  congratulatory  letter  on  the  finishing  his  house.  I 
stifled  them  here ;  and  I  beg  they  may  die  the  same 
death  at  Paris,  and  never  go  further  than  your  closet. 

Oh,  Friend,  'tis  true — this  truth  you  lovers  know  ; 
In  vain  my  structures  rise,  my  gardens  grow  ; 
In  vain  fair  Thames  reflects  the  double  scenes 
Of  hanging  mountains,  and  of  sloping  greens  ; 
Joy  lives  not  here,  to  happier  seats  it  flies, 
And  only  dwells  where  Wortley  casts  her  eyes. 
What  are  the  gay  parterre,  the  chequered  shade, 
The  morning  bower,  the  evening  colonnade, 
But  soft  recesses  of  uneasy  minds, 
To  sigh  unheard  in  to  the  passing  winds  ? 


106     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

So  the  strick  deer,  in  some  sequester'd  part, 
Lies  down  to  die,  the  arrow  at  his  heart ; 
He,  stretch'd  unseen  in  coverts  hid  from  day, 
Bleeds  drop  by  drop,  and  pants  his  life  away. 

But  Lady  Mary  was  not  the  only  flame.  Pope's 
Epistle  of  Helo'ise  to  Abelard  is  generally  supposed 
to  have  sprouted  at  the  loss  of  "Wortley"  when 
she  left  England  for  Constantinople,  but  at  the 
same  time  he  was  writing  affectionate  letters  to 
Theresa  and  Martha  Blount,  of  Mapledurham. 

Why  Pope,  as  a  lover  in  his  twenties  did  not 
marry  Martha  Blount  does  not  appear.  That  he 
did  not  ask  the  hand  which  she  would  probably 
have  given  him  when  he  was  older  and  fragile 
and  ailing  is  to  his  credit.  Martha,  however, 
was  much  with  him  in  later  years,  and  inherited 
most  of  the  little  he  had  to  leave. 

The  last  years  of  Pope's  life  were  chiefly  spent 
in  a  campaign  of  vigorous  satire  against  all  his 
especial  enemies,  and  those  whom  he  and  Swift 
termed  the  "  Dunces."  Of  The  Dunciad,  Pro- 
fessor Minto  has  justly  said  that  "  apart  from 
personal  questions  it  is  the  greatest  feat  of  the 
humorous  imagination  in  English  poetry." 

In  opposition  to  Pope's  spiteful,  elfish,  merci- 
less, and  often  venomous  moods  must  be  set  the 


ALEXANDER  POPE  107 

depression  and  sourness  naturally  generated  by 
his  constant  burden  of  ill-health.  It  is  wonder- 
ful how  much  he  accomplished  in  spite  of  this 
terrible  handicap.  In  later  years,  he  could  not 
dress  himself  without  help  ;  one  of  his  sides  was 
contracted,  and  he  could  hardly  stand  upright 
till  he  was  laced  into  a  "  boddice  "  made  of  stiff 
canvas.  But  his  face  was  "not  displeasing."  In 
fact,  he  seems  to  have  well  merited  Wycherley's 
description  when  he  spoke  of  Pope's  "  little, 
tender,  crazy  carcass." 

Though  generally  abstemious  he  is  said  to 
have  had  a  great  weakness  for  "  a  silver  sauce- 
pan in  which  it  was  his  delight  to  eat  potted 
lampreys,"  and  he  would  always  get  up  to  dinner, 
even  on  headache-days,  if  this  delicacy  were  to 
be  on  the  table.  In  fact,  some  of  his  friends 
imputed  his  death,  like  King  John's,  to  this 
fish. 

But  in  spite  of  sickness  life  seems  to  have 
passed  away  pleasantly  enough  at  Twickenham. 
The  long  golden  days  of  summer  spent  by  Pope 
and  his  friends  strolling  over  the  smooth  lawns, 
supping  in  the  grotto,  or  basking  in  the  sun  and 
sweet  air  as  the  poet's  waterman  pulled  them  up 


io8     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

the  bright  Thames,  gay  with  sailing  craft  and 
barges,  must  have  been  as  great  a  delight  to  the 
wits  from  the  Mall  and  the  coffee-houses,  as  a 
punt  and  a  reedy  backwater  of  Father  Thames 
are  nowadays  to  a  jaded  city  man. 

At  this  time,  too,  George  the  Second  was 
building  Marble  Villa  (known  later  to  George 
the  Fourth's  Mrs.  FitzHerbert  as  Marble  Hill) 
for  Mrs.  Howard,  afterwards  Lady  Suffolk. 
Pope,  Gay,  and  Swift  lent  their  taste  in  the 
furnishing  of  the  house  and  the  laying  out  of 
the  grounds,  and  it  is  said  that  Pope  was  the 
first  to  cultivate  the  weeping  willow  in  England. 
He  found  some  sticks  of  it  in  the  wrapping  of 
a  parcel  sent  from  Spain  to  the  Countess  of 
Suffolk,  and  tried  them  in  his  own  garden. 
Thus  Pope  has  left  a  permanent  and  beautiful 
memorial  to  his  name  in  the  valley  of  the 
Thames,  even  though  his  own  garden  "  was 
hacked  and  hewed  into  mere  desolation  by  the 
next  proprietor,"  and  his  villa  utterly  swept 
away  by  Lady  Howe  in  1807. 

The  charity  which  in  the  case  of  Pope  covers 
a  multitude  of  sins,  is  the  deep  affection  and  con- 
stant tenderness  which  he  showed  towards  his 


ALEXANDER  POPE  109 

mother.  She  lived  with  him  at  Twickenham  till 
1733,  and  he  would  never  be  long  absent  from 
her.  After  her  death  he  placed  an  obelisk  in  a 
secret  part  of  the  garden  bearing  a  pathetic  in- 
scription. "  She  died,"  said  Swift,  "  under  the 
care  of  the  most  dutiful  son  I  have  ever  known 
or  heard  of." 

Pope  lived  and  died  a  Papist,  but  he  was  not 
a  devotee.  When  he  began  to  break  up  at  the 
age  of  fifty-six,  he  said  to  a  friend,  "  I  am  so 
certain  of  the  soul's  being  immortal  that  I  seem 
to  feel  it  within  me,  as  it  were  by  intuition,"  and 
early  one  morning  he  rose  from  bed  and  tried 
to  begin  an  essay  upon  immortality.  A  devout 
Roman  Catholic  who  was  with  him  near  the  end 
wanted  to  send  for  a  priest.  Pope  said,  "  I  do 
not  suppose  that  it  is  essential,  but  it  will  look 
right,  and  I  heartily  thank  you  for  putting  me 
in  mind  of  it."  He  received  the  last  sacraments 
with  great  fervour  and  resignation,  and  passed 
away  on  3Oth  March,  1744,  so  peacefully  that 
his  watching  friends,  Lord  Bolingbroke,  Spence, 
and  Martha  Blount,  could  not  be  sure  of  the 
exact  moment  of  death. 

Pope's  villa  was  a  strong  attraction  to  the  in- 


no  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

quisitive  and  lion-hunting  crowd  in  his  own  day. 
He  says  : — 

What  walls  can  guard  me,  or  what  shades  can  hide  ? 
They  pierce  my  thickets,  through  my  grot  they  glide ; 
By  land,  by  water,  they  renew  the  charge ; 
They  stop  the  chariot  and  they  board  the  barge  ; 
No  place  is  sacred,  not  the  church  is  free, 
E'en  Sunday  chimes  no  Sabbath-day  to  me. 

The  villa  was  still  standing  at  the  beginning 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  though  a  modern 
residence  took  its  place,  the  famous  grotto,  of 
which  Pope  was  so  fond,  has  been  spared.  It  is 
a  short  tunnel,  built  of  flints  and  shell  with  two 
small  bays,  forming  little  windowed  rooms,  where 
the  tunnel  emerges  to  the  lawn,  and  was  origin- 
ally constructed  to  connect  the  poet's  garden 
across  the  road  with  his  other  garden  which 
slopes  to  the  river.  It  had  an  arrangement  of 
doors  and  angular  bits  of  looking-glass  which 
converted  it  in  an  instant  into  a  camera-obscura, 
"on  the  walls  of  which,"  says  Pope,  "all  objects 
of  the  river,  hills,  woods,  and  boats,  are  forming 
a  moving  picture  in  their  visible  radiation." 

One  may  still  stand  in  the  dimness  of  this  cool 
"  grot "  and  look  down,  over  the  smooth  lawn, 
to  the  sparkling  Thames;  or  see  reflected  faintly, 


ALEXANDER  POPE  m 

like  old  dreams,  in  the  perished  and  clouded 
pieces  of  glass,  the  passing  boats,  the  waving 
trees,  and  the  blue  waters  that  Pope  can  never 
again  know. 

When  Horace  Walpole,  three  years  after 
Pope's  death,  settled  at  Strawberry  Hill,  he  wrote, 
"Pope's  ghost  is  just  now  skimming  under  my 
window  by  a  most  poetical  moonlight."  It  is 
ardently  to  be  hoped  that  this  poor  spirit  does 
not  revisit,  in  our  own  day,  the  spot  once  so 
dear  to  him.  His  once  charming  Twickenham 
is  soiled  and  noisy,  electric  cars  jangle  all  day 
long  through  its  ugly  new  streets,  and  the  sub- 
urban builders  have  not  hesitated  to  plant  their 
modern  villas  upon  spots  where  once  flourished 
splendid  and  famous  cedars,  or  where  blossomed 
the  rich  gardens  of  this  soft  vale — "  Twitnam  " 
no  longer,  for  it  is  London  in  all  but  name.  A 
tablet  on  the  wall  of  the  new  fantastic  villa 
attests  the  site  only  of  his  old  home  ;  some  of 
his  riverside  garden  has  been  absorbed  by  neigh- 
bouring dwellings  ;  and  his  vault  in  the  church 
is  indicated  by  a  flat  slab,  marked  with  the 
solitary  letter  P,  and  covered  with  "church- 
warden "  pews. 


ii2     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

So  passes  the  glory  of  the  world,  of  which 
perhaps  Pope  had  a  little  too  much  in  his  own 
lifetime  to  ensure  its  untarnished  permanency. 
Yet  as  long  as  Father  Thames  rolls  his  bright 
flood  to  the  sea,  so  long  must  Pope's  name 
endure.  He  was  one  of  the  first  prophets  of 
British  Imperialism.  For  it  was  Pope  as  a  youth, 
two  hundred  years  ago,  who  wrote  these  words 
in  his  Windsor  Forest : — 

The  time  shall  come,  when  free  as  seas  or  wind 
Unbounded  Thames  shall  flow  for  all  mankind, 
Whole  nations  enter  with  each  swelling  tide, 
And  seas  but  join  the  regions  they  divide  ; 
Earth's  distant  ends  our  glory  shall  behold, 
And  the  new  world  launch  forth  to  seek  the  old. 

Johnson  spoke  truly  when  he  said,  "  Pope's 
page  is  a  velvet  lawn,  shaven  by  the  scythe  and 
levelled  by  the  roller."  But  the  excess  of  trim- 
ness  in  the  clearing  which  he  made  in  the  brakes 
and  in  the  plot  which  he  reclaimed  from  the 
marsh  must  not  be  over-ridiculed  ;  for  it  was 
from  the  soil  thus  prepared  that  English  romantic 
poetry  broke  out  into  sweet,  free  flower. 


THOMAS  GRAY 

HpHOMAS  GRAY  is  uplifted  into  the  bright 
company  of  the  great  poets  upon  the  broad 
slow  wings  of  a  single  great  poem,  the  Elegy  in  a 
Country  Churchyard;  though  it  ought  to  be  noted 
that  the  poet  himself  did  not  consider  the  Elegy 
to  be  the  finest  of  his  scanty  and  fastidious  col- 
lection. 

This  immortally  beautiful  and  thoroughly 
English  poem  has  passed  into  the  language  and 
become  subtly  interwoven  with  the  sentiments 
and  emotions  of  every-day  life.  Immensely  ad- 
mired and  imitated  all  over  Europe  in  Gray's 
own  day,  it  has  exercised  an  extraordinary  in- 
fluence over  the  poets  in  each  succeeding 
generation — those  unblessed  and  often  slighted 
benefactors  of  the  human  race,  who  "far  from 
the  madding  crowd's  ignoble  strife,"  keep  "  the 
noiseless  tenour  of  their  way  " ;  the  poets  who, 
even  more  acutely  than  "  the  rude  forefathers  of 
H  113 


n4  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

the  hamlet "  (over  whom  Gray  expends  his  melan- 
choly sensibility  in  the  Ekgy\  have  felt  that 

Chill  penury  repressed  their  noble  rage, 
And  froze  the  genial  current  of  the  soul. 

Gray's  Elegy  has  the  steady,  pitiless,  magnifi- 
cent tread  of  that  other  great  song  to  Death, 
composed  in  the  same  century,  Handel's  "  Dead 
March  in  Saul."  They  are  fraught  with  the 
same  fascination  and  fear  with  which  men  see 
the  once  fair  body  gathered  to  the  cold  earth  ; 
but  the  robust  musician,  scorning  morbidity, 
keeps  his  work  throughout  in  the  major  key, 
while  the  gentle  poet  can  barely  tune  his  soul 
to  a  "  trembling  hope "  that  has  a  less  lively 
sense  of  a  sure  and  certain  resurrection  than  of 
broken  columns,  snapped  strings,  shattered  urns, 
and  all  the  other  dreary  and  godless  emblems  of 
the  Augustan  age.  It  is  only  familiarity  with  the 
lines  that  blinds  us  to  the  morbidness  dwelling 
in  the  tender  heart  of  such  passages  as  these  in 
the  Elegy : — 

The  boast  of  heraldry,  the  pomp  of  power, 
And  all  that  beauty,  all  that  wealth  e'er  gave, 

Await  alike  the  inevitable  hour. 

The  paths  of  glory  lead  but  to  the  grave. 


THOMAS  GRAY  115 

Can  storied  urn  or  animated  bust 

Back  to  its  mansion  call  the  fleeting  breath  ? 

Can  honour's  voice  provoke  the  silent  dust, 
Or  flattery  soothe  the  dull  cold  ear  of  death  ? 
•  •  •  •  * 

Full  many  a  gem  of  purest  ray  serene 

The  dark  unfathomed  caves  of  Ocean  bear  : 

Full  many  a  flower  is  born  to  blush  unseen, 
And  waste  its  sweetness  on  the  desert  air. 

For  who,  to  dumb  forgetfulness  a  prey, 
This  pleasing  anxious  being  e'er  resigned, 

Left  the  warm  precincts  of  the  cheerful  day, 
Nor  cast  one  longing,  lingering  look  behind  ? 

Gray's  Muse  was  mounted  on  no  swift-winged 
Pegasus,  he  was  no  purely  lyrical  poet,  born  with 
an  unquenchable  fountain  of  living  waters  in  his 
soul  :  nevertheless,  as  Mr.  Swinburne  has  said, 
"  as  an  elegiac  poet  Gray  holds  for  all  ages  to 
come  his  unassailable  and  sovereign  station." 

The  incidents  of  Gray's  life  are  as  meagre  as 
his  poetry.  Indeed,  there  is  only  one  which  stands 
out  with  any  great  distinction  or  which  helped 
strongly  in  the  moulding  of  his  character  ;  and 
that  was  the  grand  tour  which  he. made  with 
Horace  Walpole  from  the  years  1739  to  1741. 

Gray's  extravagant  and  ill-natured  father  seems 


n6  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

to  have  entirely  neglected  his  son,  who  was  born 
in  his  house  in  Cornhill  on  26th  December, 1 7 1 6 ; 
but  his  mother's  devotion  was  unbounded,  and 
Gray  always  evinced  for  her  the  warmest  affec- 
tion and  gratitude.  She  saved  his  life  in  infancy 
by  opening  a  vein  with  a  pair  of  scissors  when 
he  had  fallen  into  a  fit ;  and  educated  him  at 
Eton  College  at  her  own  expense. 

At  Eton,  Gray  became  the  friend  of  Horace 
Walpole,  and  with  the  exception  of  a  three  years' 
breach  (which  began  in  the  last  months  of  their 
tour  and  was  patched  up  in  1744)  their  friend- 
ship was  warm  and  lifelong. 

In  the  Ode  on  a  Distant  Prospect  of  Eton  College, 
composed  the  year  after  his  foreign  travels,  Gray 
recalls  his  own  and  moralizes  on  boyhood  in 
general.  The  finest  lines  of  this  poem  have 
become  as  familiar  as  those  of  the  Etegy.  For 
instance  : — 

Some  bold  adventurers  disdain 
The  limits  of  their  little  reign, 

And  unknown  regions  dare  descry  : 

Still  as  they  run  they  look  behind, 
They  hear  a  voice  in  every  wind, 
And  snatch  a  fearful  joy. 


THOMAS  GRAY  117 

And  especially  : — 

Thought  would  destroy  their  paradise. 
No  more  ; — where  ignorance  is  bliss, 
'Tis  folly  to  be  wise. 

Gray,  after  leaving  Cambridge,  had  not  the 
means  for  so  expensive  a  luxury  as  the  grand 
tour,  but  Walpole  suggested  that  they  should  go 
together,  the  famous  politician's  son  paying  all 
expenses.  Gray,  however,  was  to  be  regarded  as 
an  independent  fellow-traveller  and  not  as  a  secre- 
tary or  paid  companion.  It  was  a  happy  windfall 
for  a  young  poet.  They  left  Dover  in  March, 
1739,  armed  with  introductions  to  the  best 
society  of  the  day  in  Paris.  Here  Gray  became 
a  man  of  fashion  in  silk  and  ruffles,  and  waist- 
coat and  breeches  so  tight  that  he  could  scarcely 
breathe  ;  and  the  pair  entered  upon  a  round  of 
merriment  and  sight-seeing,  and  took  excursions 
to  Versailles  and  Chantilly,  "  to  walk  by  moon- 
light, and  hear  the  ladies  and  the  nightingales 
sing."  Gray's  letters  home  are  as  charming  as 
his  letters  of  thirty  years  later  when  he  visited 
the  Cumbrian  Lakes,  and  make  one  wish  that, 
without  abandoning  poetry,  he  had  also  become 
an  essayist  like  Charles  Lamb,  to  whom  he  bears 


n8  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

much  resemblance  in  his  whimsical,  satirical,  and 
graceful  prose.  In  this  connection  it  is  interest- 
ing to  note  the  remark  made,  in  opposition  to 
the  popular  estimate  of  the  author  of  the  Elegy, 
by  Horace  Walpole:  "Gray  never  wrote  any- 
thing easily  but  things  of  humour  ;  humour 
was  his  natural  and  original  turn."  He  seems 
even  to  have  found  it  easy  to  joke  at  his  own 
melancholy,  for  he  wrote  to  his  friend  West 
after  his  return  to  England  : — 

Low  spirits  are  my  true  and  faithful  companions ; 
they  get  up  with  me,  go  to  bed  with  me,  make 
journeys  and  returns  as  I  do ;  nay,  and  pay  visits  and 
will  even  affect  to  be  jocose  and  force  a  feeble  laugh 
with  me ;  but  most  commonly  we  sit  alone  together, 
and  are  the  prettiest  insipid  company  in  the  world. 

Walpole  and  Gray  passed  on  to  Switzerland 
and  Italy.  Gray's  description  of  the  Grande 
Chartreuse  is  remarkable  when  we  remember 
that  the  wild  sublime  scenery  of  the  Alps  was 
considered  as  undesirable  and  barbaric  in  Gray's 
day  as  was  Gothic  architecture.  He  says  : — 

In  our  little  journey  up  to  the  Grande  Chartreuse 
I  do  not  remember  to  have  gone  ten  paces  without  an 
exclamation  that  there  was  no  restraining ;  not  a  pre- 
cipice, not  a  torrent,  not  a  cliff,  but  is  pregnant  -with  religion 


g  i* 

s  o  s 
u  5  a, 

22? 


00     fc. 


THOMAS  GRAY  119 

and  poetry.  There  are  certain  scenes  that  would  awe 
an  atheist  into  belief,  without  the  help  of  other  argu- 
ment. One  need  not  have  a  very  fantastic  imagina- 
tion to  see  spirits  there  at  noon-day.  You  have  Death 
perpetually  before  your  eyes,  only  so  far  removed  as 
to  compose  the  mind  without  frighting  it.  I  am  well 
persuaded  St.  Bruno  was  a  man  of  no  common  genius, 
to  choose  such  a  situation  for  his  retirement ;  and 
perhaps  I  should  have  been  a  disciple  of  his,  had  I 
been  born  in  his  time. 

It  was  while  penetrating  the  Alps  into  Italy 
that  Walpole  had  the  grief  of  seeing  his  little 
spaniel  Tory  snatched  from  the  roadside  by  a 
hungry  wolf  and  carried  off  under  his  very  eyes 
before  one  of  the  gaping  servants  had  wit  to 
draw  a  pistol.  Walpole  seems  to  have  been 
unfortunate  in  his  pets  ;  for  eight  years  later 
Gray  wrote  for  his  friend  a  poem,  which  Dr. 
Johnson  rather  woodenly  called  "a  trifle,  but 
not  a  happy  trifle,"  on  hearing  of  his  loss  of 
a  favourite  cat.  "The  pensive  Selima,"  with 
"  the  fair  round  face,  the  snowy  beard,  the 
velvet  of  her  paws,"  fell  into  a  china  tub  con- 
taining gold  fish  and  was  drowned  before  any 
one  discovered  her  plight.  Walpole,  after  Gray's 
death,  placed  the  china  tub  on  a  pedestal  at 


izo  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Strawberry  Hill,  with  a  few  lines  of  the  poem 
for  its  inscription.  The  letter  which  accom- 
panied the  poem  is  in  Gray's  happiest  manner  : 
although  he  quite  loses  sight  of  poor  pussy's  loss 
of  her  nine  lives  in  his  desire  to  shine  as  a 
graceful  humourist. 

The  year  following  Gray's  return  from  his 
foreign  travels,  considerable  changes  took  place 
in  his  family.  His  father  died,  and  his  mother 
and  two  of  her  sisters,  in  fairly  easy  circum- 
stances, took  a  house  at  Stoke  Pogis,  in  Buck- 
inghamshire. Gray  went  back  to  Peterhouse, 
Cambridge,  took  his  bachelor's  degree  in  Civil 
Law,  and  was  installed  as  a  resident  of  that 
college.  He  spent  the  remainder  of  his  life 
between  Cambridge,  Stoke,  and  London,  with 
what  he  calls  "  Lilliputian  travels  "  about  Eng- 
land and  Scotland. 

The  enlightenment  and  modernity  of  Gray's 
mind  on  such  subjects  as  architecture  and  the 
first  stirrings  of  romantic  poetry  are  remarkable 
when  we  reflect  how  little  connection  this  quiet 
recluse  had  with  the  noisy  boisterous  life  which 
buzzed  around  his  cell.  In  a  period  which 
could  so  little  understand  the  enormous  genius 


THOMAS  GRAY  121 

of  Shakespeare  that  it  could  actually  discuss  him 
in  the  same  breath  as  Rowe  and  Addison,  he 
wrote  these  words  to  a  friend  : — 

In  truth  Shakespeare's  language  is  one  of  his 
principal  beauties  ;  and  he  has  no  less  advantage  over 
your  Addisons  and  Rowes  in  this,  than  in  those  other 
great  excellences  you  mention.  Every  word  in  him 
is  a  picture. 

And  while,  too,  the  heavy  Georgian  taste  was 
still  deriding  the  marvellous  flowering  of  Gothic 
architecture  as  barbarous,  Gray  was  writing  his 
Architectural  Gothica,  of  which  one  of  his  latest  bio- 
graphers has  said  :  "  Gray's  treatise  on  Norman 
architecture  is  so  sound  and  learned  that  it  is 
much  to  be  regretted  that  he  has  not  left  us 
more  of  his  architectural  essays.  ...  It  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  Gray  was  the  first  modern 
student  of  the  history  of  architecture." 

The  Elegy  was  published  in  1751  :  in  1756, 
when  in  middle-age,  Gray  passed  from  Peter- 
house  to  Pembroke  College,  after  having  borne, 
as  his  friend  and  first  biographer  Mason  has 
said,  "  the  insults  of  two  or  three  young  gentle- 
men of  fortune  longer  than  might  reasonably 
have  been  expected  from  a  man  of  less  warmth 


122  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

of  temper."  The  last  straw  had  been  put  on 
Gray's  endurance  by  a  practical  joke  of  the 
young  bucks  of  Peterhouse,  who,  like  too  many 
men  of  fashion  of  the  eighteenth  century,  were 
so  much  occupied  in  prating  about  "gentlemen" 
and  their  "  honour  "  that  they  had  little  time  to 
learn  anything  about  either  rare  commodity.  Gray, 
for  many  years,  had  had  a  great  horror  of  fire. 
To  save  himself  from  being  ever  burned  alive, 
he  had  had  an  iron  bar  (which  still  remains  in 
the  same  spot)  fixed  within  his  bedroom  window 
at  Peterhouse,  and  kept  a  rope-ladder  always  at 
hand  down  which  he  could  descend  in  case  of 
danger.  The  more  rowdy  fellow -commoners 
placed  a  tub  of  cold  water  under  his  window 
one  night  and  raised  a  false  alarm  of  fire,  with 
very  unhappy  consequences  to  the  poor  poet, 
who  was  rescued  dripping  and  shivering  in 
night  attire,  from  the  tub,  by  the  delighted 
barbarians.  Gray  himself  said,  "  Removing  my- 
self from  Peterhouse  to  Pembroke  may  be 
looked  upon  as  a  sort  of  era  in  a  life  so  barren 
of  events  as  mine." 

A  year  later  he  declined  the  laureateship ;  but 
in  1768  he  accepted  the  professorship  of  history 


E-    ,« 


THOMAS  GRAY  123 

and  modern  languages  at  the  University.  Dur- 
ing his  long  residences  in  Cambridge  Gray 
composed  the  remainder  of  his  most  ambiti- 
ous poems — the  Pindaric  Odes,  the  Progress  of 
Poesy,  the  Bard,  his  paraphrases  of  Norse  and 
Celtic  lyrics,  and  the  Installation  Ode — which  are 
more  helpful  to  the  student  of  the  development  of 
poetry  in  England  than  to  the  reader  who  turns 
to  our  sweetest  singers  for  the  food  of  angels* 

Matthew  Arnold  has  said,  "  Born  in  the  same 
year  with  Milton,  Gray  would  have  been  another 
man  ;  born  in  the  same  year  with  Burns,  he 
would  have  been  another  man,"  whereas,  "  a  sort 
of  spiritual  east  wind  was  at  that  time  blowing  ; 
neither  Butler  nor  Gray  could  flower.  They 
never  spoke  out."  That  the  instinct  of  romantic 
poetry  lay  buried  in  him  is  shown  by  the  follow- 
ing words,  written  after  his  return  from  Scotland 
in  1765: — 

I  am  returned  from  Scotland  charmed  with  my 
expedition  ;  it  is  of  the  Highlands  I  speak ;  the  Low- 
lands are  worth  seeing  once,  but  the  mountains  are 
ecstatic,  and  ought  to  be  visited  in  pilgrimage  once  a 
year.  None  but  these  monstrous  children  of  God 
know  how  to  join  so  much  beauty  with  so  much 
horror.  A  fig  for  your  poets,  painters,  gardeners  and 


124     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

clergymen,  that  have  not  been  among  them;  their 
imagination  can  be  made  up  of  nothing  but  bowling- 
greens,  flowering  shrubs,  horse-ponds,  Fleet-ditches, 
shell-grottoes,  and  Chinese  rails. 

But  either  from  mental  inability  or  physical 
inertia  Gray  has  not  left  us  more  than  one  great 
song  to  gather  into  the  world's  treasury.  He 
died  from  a  more  than  usually  severe  attack  of 
hereditary  gout  on  3<Dth  July,  1771,  at  the  age 
of  fifty-four,  an  interesting,  admired,  warmly- 
loved,  and  much-petted  man  of  letters.  He  had 
known  neither  poverty,  great  sorrow,  the  cruel 
buffetings  of  adverse  Fate,  nor  exuberant  happi- 
ness, but  he  adorned  his  niche  with  an  amiable 
and  lovable  personality,  and  at  least  one  imperish- 
able work  of  genius. 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH 

TT  is  strange  that  the  writings  of  Oliver  Gold- 
smith— an  Irishman  and  a  wanderer,  whose 
vagrant  days  were  passed  in  foreign  lands,  in 
wretched  attics  or  in  extravagant  bachelor  cham- 
bers— should  yield  us  such  a  harvest  of  peaceful 
home-life  ;  the  mellow  golden  life  of  sleepy  sun- 
soaked  hamlets  and  fruitful  English  fields. 

Goldsmith  saw  the  light  on  the  loth  of 
November,  1728,  in  the  village  of  Pallas,  county 
Longford.  The  son  of  a  poor  Irish  clergyman, 
his  wanderings  began  at  two  years  of  age  by 
his  family  moving  to  the  village  of  Lissoy,  in 
Westmeath.  Here  were  spent  his  early  years, 
and  he  has  immortalized  the  little  place  in 
his  best  known  and  most  beautiful  poem,  The 
Deserted  Village. 

Dear  lovely  bowers  of  innocence  and  ease, 
Seats  of  my  youth,  when  every  sport  could  please, 
How  often  have  I  loitered  o'er  thy  green, 
Where  humble  happiness  endeared  each  scene ! 
125 


1*6  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

How  often  have  I  paused  on  every  charm, 

The  sheltered  cot,  the  cultivated  farm, 

The  never-failing  brook,  the  busy  mill, 

The  decent  church  that  topt  the  neighbouring  hill, 

The  hawthorn  bush,  with  seats  beneath  the  shade, 

For  talking  age  and  whispering  lovers  made ! 

Beside  yon  straggling  fence  that  skirts  the  way, 

With  blossom'd  furze  unprofitably  gay, 

There,  in  his  noisy  mansion,  skilled  to  rule, 

The  village  master  taught  his  little  school. 

A  man  severe  he  was,  and  stern  to  view ; 

I  knew  him  well,  and  every  truant  knew  : 

Well  had  the  boding  tremblers  learned  to  trace 

The  day's  disasters  in  his  morning  face  ; 

Full  well  they  laughed  with  counterfeited  glee 

At  all  his  jokes,  for  many  a  joke  had  he  ; 

Full  well  the  busy  whisper  circling  round 

Conveyed  the  dismal  tidings  when  he  frowned. 

Yet  he  was  kind,  or,  if  severe  in  aught, 

The  love  he  bore  to  learning  was  in  fault ; 

The  village  all  declared  how  much  he  knew  : 

'Twas  certain  he  could  write,  and  cipher  too  : 

Lands  he  could  measure,  terms  and  tides  presage, 

And  e'en  the  story  ran  that  he  could  gauge  : 

In  arguing,  too,  the  person  owned  his  skill ; 

For  e'en  though  vanquished,  he  could  argue  still ; 

While  words  of  learned  length  and  thundering  sound 

Amazed  the  gazing  rustics  ranged  around  ; 

And  still  they  gazed,  and  still  the  wonder  grew 

That  one  small  head  could  carry  all  he  knew. 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH  127 

Sweet  was  the  sound,  when  oft  at  evening's  close 
Up  yonder  hill  the  village  murmur  rose. 
There,  as  I  passed  with  careless  steps  and  slow, 
The  mingling  notes  came  softened  from  below  ; 
The  swain  responsive  as  the  milkmaid  sung, 
The  sober  herd  that  lowed  to  meet  their  young, 
The  noisy  geese  that  gabbled  o'er  the  pool, 
The  playful  children  just  let  loose  from  school, 
The  watchdog's  voice  that  bayed  the  whispering  wind, 
And  the  loud  laugh  that  spake  the  vacant  mind. 

Perhaps  some  foreshadowing  of  his  own 
wandering  years  may  have  fallen  across  the 
childish  mind  of  Goldsmith  as  he  too  often 
saw  "  a  bold  peasantry "  —  victims  of  greed 
and  famine — leaving  their  simple  homes  and 
"  humble  bowers  "  to  seek  an  uncertain  liveli- 
hood in  the  New  World.  For  these  lines, 
written  when  the  man  of  forty  odd  felt  recollec- 
tions of  the  past  pressing  round  his  heart,  are  full 
of  the  anguish  and  despair  of  Irish  emigration : — 

When  the  poor  exiles,  every  pleasure  past, 
Hung  round  the  bowers,  and  fondly  looked  their  last, 
And  took  a  long  farewell,  and  wished  in  vain 
For  seats  like  these  beyond  the  western  main, 
And  shuddering  still  to  face  the  distant  deep, 
Returned  and  wept,  and  still  returned  to  weep. 

But  the  happy  careless  days  of  Goldsmith's 
childhood  were  soon  over.  He  was  sent,  a 
shy  awkward  boy  pitted  by  smallpox,  from  one 


128     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

boarding  school  to  another.  As  a  "  sizar  "  or 
poor  scholar  at  Trinity  College,  he  wrote  street 
ballads  to  eke  out  a  hand-to-mouth  existence. 
He  started  for  the  grand  tour  with  a  guinea 
in  his  pocket,  and  wandering  through  France, 
Germany,  and  Italy  earned  food  and  lodging 
by  "disputations"  in  monasteries  and  flute-play- 
ing for  villagers,  and  gained  a  dubious  medical 
degree  at  either  Lou  vain  or  Padua.  In  that 
graceful  and  reflective  poem,  The  Traveller,  he 
brings  charmingly  before  our  minds  one  of  these 
days  in  his  Wanderjahre. 

How  often  have  I  led  thy  sportive  choir 
With  tuneless  pipe,  beside  the  murmuring  Loire  ? 
Where  shading  elms  along  the  margin  grew, 
And,  freshened  from  the  wave,  the  zephyr  flew  ; 
And  haply,  though  my  harsh  touch  faltering  still, 
But  mocked  all  tune,  and  marred  the  dancer's  skill, 
Yet  would  the  village  praise  my  wondrous  power, 
And  dance,  forgetful  of  the  noontide  hour. 

And  this  is  part  of  his  firmly-drawn,  bright-hued 
picture  of  Holland,  where  "the  broad  ocean  leans 
against  the  land  "  : 

.    .    .    the  pent  ocean,  rising  o'er  the  pile, 
Sees  an  amphibious  world  beneath  him  smile, 
The  slow  canal,  the  yellow-blossomed  vale, 
The  willow-tufted  bank,  the  gliding  sail, 
The  crowded  mart,  the  cultivated  plain, 
A  new  creation  rescued  from  his  reign. 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH  129 

At  last  Goldsmith  straggled  somehow  to 
London,  to  be  a  threadbare  physician  in  South- 
wark,  an  usher  in  a  boys'  school  at  Peckham,  at 
best  a  publisher's  hack.  We  see  him  in  1758, 
at  thirty  years  of  age,  ungainly  and  down-at- 
heel  ;  without  friends,  save  those  in  distant  Ire- 
land ;  without  a  home,  hiding  in  squalid  garrets 
in  back  slums  ;  without  occupation,  barring  the 
remorseless  hack-work  which  barely  shielded  him 
from  destitution — "  remote,  unfriended,  melan- 
choly, slow." 

He  has  drawn  the  picture  for  us  in  The 
Traveller  in  lines  of  pathetic  beauty  : — 

Blest  be  that  spot,  where  cheerful  guests  retire 
To  pause  from  toil,  and  trim  their  evening  fire ; 
Blest  that  abode,  where  want  and  pain  repair, 
And  every  stranger  finds  a  ready  chair  : 
Blest  be  those  feasts  with  simple  plenty  crowned, 
Where  all  the  ruddy  family  around 
Laugh  at  the  jests  or  pranks  that  never  fail, 
Or  sigh  with  pity  at  some  mournful  tale  ; 
Or  press  the  bashful  stranger  to  his  food, 
And  learn  the  luxury  of  doing  good. 

But  me,  not  destined  such  delights  to  share, 
My  prime  of  life  in  wandering  spent  and  care  : 
Impelled,  with  steps  unceasing  to  pursue 
Some  fleeting  good,  that  mocks  me  with  the  view  ; 

I 


i3o     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

That,  like  the  circle  bounding  earth  and  skies, 
Allures  from  far,  yet,  as  I  follow,  flies  ; 
My  fortune  leads  to  traverse  realms  alone, 
And  find  no  spot  of  all  the  world  my  own. 

But  times  slowly  brightened  for  a  man  who 
could  deride  Fortune  as  easily  as  he  dropped  her 
a  tear.  His  Description  of  an  Author's  Bedchamber 
is  but  a  poor  example  of  Goldsmith's  naturally 
high  spirits — foolishly  disregarded  by  too  senti- 
mental biographers. 

The  rusty  grate  unconscious  of  a  fire  : 

With  beer  and  milk  arrears  the  frieze  was  scored, 

And  five  cracked  teacups  dressed  the  chimney-board ; 

A  nightcap  decked  his  brows  instead  of  bay, 

A  cap  by  night — a  stocking  all  the  day ! 

His  delightful  nonsense  verse,  such  as  the 
elegies  on  The  Mad  Dog,  Mrs.  Mary  Blaize — 
The  Glory  of  her  Sex^  and  the  Haunch  of  Venison, 
are  gay  as  butterflies  and  light  as  air. 

In  1759  Goldsmith  became  the  editor  of  the 
short-lived  Bee,  in  which  occurs  his  famous  City 
Night  Piece.  Out  of  his  contributions  to  the 
Public  Ledger  grew  those  delicately  satirical  letters, 
The  Citizen  of  the  World,  which  brought  him 
modest  fame  and  two  hundred  a  year.  He  went 
to  Bath  and  wrote  the  life  of  that  king  of  fops 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH  131 

Beau  Nash  :  finally  he  became  the  friend  of 
Dr.  Johnson  and  of  the  leading  artists  and 
literary  men  of  his  day.  Meanwhile  his  master- 
pieces were  growing  line  by  line,  page  by  page, 
in  the  shade  of  the  tedious  publishers'  hack- 
work, which  still  had  to  be  his  chief  means  of 
support. 

The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  that  wonderful  novel 
which  blooms  eternally  fresh  as  a  whitethorn  in 
May,  was  written  amidst  drudgery  and  debt, 
and  written,  too,  with  a  painful  care  which  one 
little  suspects  when  reading  his  clear  running 
prose.  As  William  Black  has  said,  "  Any  young 
writer  who  may  imagine  that  the  power  of  clear 
and  concise  literary  expression  comes  by  nature, 
cannot  do  better  than  study,  in  Mr.  Cunning- 
ham's big  collection  of  Goldsmith's  writings, 
the  continual  and  minute  alterations  which  the 
author  considered  necessary  even  after  the  first 
edition — sometimes  when  the  second  and  third 
editions — had  been  published." 

Goethe,  at  the  time  of  publication,  said  that 
The  Vicar  of  Wakefield  was  one  of  the  best  novels 
ever  written,  and  called  it  a  "prose-idyll."  It 
is  certainly  the  musical  prose  of  a  true  poet. 


i32     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

How  brimful  of  sweet  emotion  and  delight  in 
calm  nature  is  this  description  of  the  worthy 
vicar's  return  to  his  home  : — 

And  now  my  heart  caught  new  sensations  of 
pleasure,  the  nearer  I  approached  that  peaceful 
mansion.  As  a  bird  that  had  been  frighted  from  its 
nest,  my  affections  outwent  my  haste,  and  hovered 
round  my  little  fireside  with  all  the  rapture  of  ex- 
pectation. ...  As  I  walked  but  slowly,  the  night 
waned  apace.  The  labourers  of  the  day  were  all 
retired  to  rest ;  the  lights  were  out  in  every  cottage  ; 
no  sounds  were  heard  but  of  the  shrilling  cock,  and 
the  deep-mouthed  watchdog  at  hollow  distance. 

The  old  and  familiar  tale  of  the  entry  of  this 
graceful  and  tender  masterpiece  into  the  world 
of  fame  is  too  ironical  to  be  overlooked  ;  more- 
over, it  gives  the 'key  to  Goldsmith's  character. 
Boswell  took  it  down  from  Johnson's  own  lips, 
though  it  should  be  said  that  one  of  Goldsmith's 
latest  biographers,  Mr.  Austin  Dobson,  has 
pointed  out  that  Newbery  or  Strahan  (which- 
ever publisher  Johnson  went  to)  only  bought  a 
share  or  shares  in  the  work.  For  Benjamin 
Collins,  a  printer  of  Salisbury,  is  known  to  have 
bought  a  third  share  for  twenty  guineas.  John- 
son says  : — 


DR.  JOHNSON  READING  "THE  VICAR  OF  WAKEFIELD"  IN 
GOLDSMITH'S  LODGINGS. 

After  Sir  John  Gilbert,  R.A. 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH  133 

I  received  one  morning  a  message  from  poor 
Goldsmith  that  he  was  in  great  distress,  and,  as  it 
was  not  in  his  power  to  come  to  me,  begging  that 
I  would  come  to  him  as  soon  as  possible.  I  sent  him 
a  guinea,  and  promised  to  come  to  him  directly.  I 
accordingly  went  as  soon  as  I  was  dressed,  and  found 
that  his  landlady  had  arrested  him  for  his  rent,  at 
which  he  was  in  a  violet  passion.  I  perceived  that  he 
had  already  changed  my  guinea,  and  had  got  a  bottle 
of  Madeira  and  a  glass  before  him.  I  put  the  cork 
into  the  bottle,  desired  he  would  be  calm,  and  began 
to  talk  to  him  of  the  means  by  which  he  might  be 
extricated.  He  then  told  me  that  he  had  a  novel 
ready  for  the  press,  which  he  produced  to  me.  I 
looked  into  it,  and  saw  its  merit ;  told  the  landlady  I 
should  soon  return ;  and  having  gone  to  a  bookseller, 
sold  it  for  £60.  I  brought  Goldsmith  the  money, 
and  he  discharged  his  rent,  not  without  rating  his 
landlady  in  a  high  tone  for  having  used  him  so  ill. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  greater  part 
of  Goldsmith's  comparatively  short  life — he  died 
from  a  fever,  aggravated  by  a  disquieted  mind 
and  his  own  neglect  on  4th  April,  1774,  at  the 
age  of  forty-six — was  hard,  sordid,  and  harassed 
by  debt,  but  it  cannot  be  overlooked  that  it  was 
largely  so  by  his  own  making. 

Of  these  forty-six  years  the  first  twenty-one 
were  spent  at  home,  at  school,  and  at  college; 


134     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

seven  more  in  seeing  the  world  ;  and  although 
in  his  wanderings  he  is  said  to  have  "begged  his 
way  through  Europe,"  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  for  a  young  man  in  the  eighteenth  century 
to  go  through  Europe  in  any  manner  was  no 
mean  privilege.  The  grand  tour  was  the  key- 
stone of  the  arch  of  education  for  the  young 
"  buck  "  of  rank  and  fortune,  and  he  always  set 
it  in  place  with  a  due  accompaniment  of  chariots, 
armed  servants,  and  particular  introductions. 
But  the  modest  scholar  had  to  forgo  all  this 
unless  he  were  fortunate  enough  to  fall  in  with 
a  patron  to  pay  expenses,  as  Horace  Walpole 
had  done  for  the  poet  Gray  sixteen  years  before. 
The  remaining  eighteen  years  of  Goldsmith's 
life  contained  much  misery  and  some  great  hard- 
ships, but  we  are  told,  on  Lord  Macaulay's  cal- 
culation, that  the  last  seven  of  these  years  saw 
him  earning  an  annual  income  of  ^800 — and 
this  for  a  single  man  without  other  claims  than 
those  of  natural  and  spontaneous  generosity. 
At  the  most  he  suffered  four  utterly  wretched 
years  when  hope  and  ambition  seemed  alike 
quenched  and  gone,  but  this,  unfortunately,  is 
not  an  extraordinary  number  in  the  lives  of  men 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH  135 

of  genius — so  many  of  whom  have  been  "  men 
of  sorrows." 

Goldsmith  was  born  with  the  happy-go-lucky 
extravagance  and  generosity  of  a  true  Irishman. 
To  one  starving  creature  with  five  children  he 
gave  at  one  time  the  blankets  off  his  bed,  and 
crept  into  the  bedding  for  shelter  from  the  cold. 
Yet  as  a  practically  penniless  student  in  Edin- 
burgh his  tailor's  bills  have  been  found  boasting 
the  following  items:  "silver  Hatt-Lace,"  "Blew 
sattin,"  and  "  best  sfine  high  Clarett-colour'd 
Cloth  at  I9/-  a  yard."  The  first  night  of  his 
successful  comedy,  The  Good-Natured  Man,  he 
appeared  in  a  gorgeous  suit  of  "  Tyrian  bloom, 
satin  grain,  and  garter  blue  silk  breeches  " :  and 
the  £  $00  which  it  put  into  his  pocket  he  spent 
in  a  few  months,  ^400  being  paid  for  a  lease 
of  chambers  in  Brick  Court,  Middle  Temple, 
the  other  ^"100  dwindling  away  rapidly  in  their 
furnishing  and  decorating,  and  frolics  and  suppers 
with  his  friends. 

She  Stoops  to  Conquer  was  a  roaring  success 
from  the  first  night ;  from  his  histories  of  Rome, 
of  Greece,  of  England,  and  his  Animated  Nature 
he  often  received  considerable  sums  in  advance  ; 


136  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

even  The  Deserted  Village  brought  something, 
though  the  exact  sum  is  not  known — but  the 
money  ran  through  hands  which  had  never 
learned  to  close  upon  it,  and  sank  into  the 
morass  of  debt  which  quaked  beneath  him  at 
every  step.  No  doubt  poor  Goldsmith's  good 
nature  was  amply  imposed  on.  One  of  his 
friends  has  said,  "  Our  Doctor  had  a  constant 
levee  of  his  distrest  countrymen,  whose  wants 
as  far  as  he  was  able  he  always  relieved  :  and 
he  has  often  been  known  to  leave  himself  with- 
out a  guinea,  in  order  to  supply  the  necessities 
of  others." 

When  "the  necessities  of  others"  were  not 
too  pressing,  the  open-handed  Irishman  made 
haste  to  treat  himself  to  luxuries  which  were  not 
always  worth  the  money.  His  fine  clothes  have 
already  been  mentioned  ;  and  there  is  no  doubt 
that,  despite  an  unprepossessing  face  and  a 
blundering  and  awkward  manner,  he  aspired 
now  and  then  to  shine  as  a  dandy.  Boswell, 
who  was  cattishly  jealous  of  Goldsmith,  has  left 
a  spiteful  account  of  a  dinner  at  his  lodgings 
before  which  "  Goldsmith  strutted  about  bragging 
of  his  dress."  David  Garrick,  one  of  the  other 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH  137 

guests,  demurred.  "  Let  me  tell  you,"  retorted 
Goldsmith,  "  that  when  my  tailor  brought  home 
my  bloom-coloured  coat,  he  said,  '  Sir,  I  have 
a  favour  to  beg  of  you.  When  anybody  asks 
you  who  made  your  clothes,  be  pleased  to 
mention  John  Filby,  at  the  Harrow,  in  Water 
Lane.' " 

Worthy  Mr.  Filby,  of  the  Harrow,  said  after 
Goldsmith's  death,  "  he  had  been  a  good 
customer,  and  had  he  lived  would  have  paid 
every  farthing." 

We  hear  of  no  serious  love-affair  in  Gold- 
smith's life.  There  has  been  foolish  talk  about 
the  poet  and  the  younger  Miss  Horneck,  with 
whom,  and  her  mother  and  sister,  he  made  the 
only  tour  abroad  which  he  took  in  later  life. 
He  nicknamed  her  the  "Jessamy  Bride"  and 
her  sister  "  Little  Comedy  " ;  but  that  both  the 
romance  of  love  and  of  foreign  travel  had  left 
him  by  the  time  they  were  thus  thrown  together 
is  shown  pretty  clearly  by  the  following  extract 
from  a  letter  to  Reynolds,  written  from  Paris  : — 

I  find  that  travelling  at  twenty  and  at  forty  are 
very  different  things.  I  set  out  with  all  my  confirmed 
habits  about  me,  and  can  find  nothing  on  the  Continent 


138     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

so  good  as  when  I  formerly  left  it.  One  of  our  chief 
amusements  here  is  scolding  at  everything  we  meet 
with,  and  praising  everything  and  every  person  we 
left  at  home.  ...  I  could  tell  you  of  disasters  and 
adventures  without  number,  of  our  lying  in  barns, 
and  of  my  being  half  poisoned  with  a  dish  of  green 
peas,  of  our  quarrelling  with  postilions  and  being 
cheated  by  our  landladies,  but  I  reserve  all  this  for 
a  happy  hour  which  I  expect  to  share  with  you  upon 
my  return.  ...  I  will  soon  be  among  you,  better 
pleased  with  my  situation  at  home  that  I  ever  was 
before.  And  yet  I  must  say,  that  if  anything  could 
make  France  pleasant,  the  very  good  women  with 
whom  I  am  at  present  would  certainly  do  it.  I  could 
say  more  about  that,  but  I  intend  showing  them  this 
letter  before  I  send  it  away. 

Goldsmith  died  ^2000  in  debt.  "  Was  ever 
poet  so  trusted  before  ? "  He  was  buried  in 
the  Temple  Church  on  9th  April,  1774,  but 
his  precise  resting-place  (like  poor  Mozart's — 
the  Goldsmith  of  Music)  is  unknown.  Some 
two  years  later  a  monument  was  erected  to  him 
by  his  friends  in  Westminster  Abbey,  John- 
son writing  "  the  poor  dear  Doctor's  epitaph." 
In  that  memorial  to  his  fame  Johnson  has  said 
he  "  left  scarcely  any  style  of  writing  untouched, 
and  touched  nothing  he  did  not  adorn";  but 


OLIVER  GOLDSMITH  139 

Johnson's  wisest  words  were  these  :  "  He  had 
raised  money  and  squandered  it  by  every  artifice 
of  acquisition  and  folly  of  expense.  But  let  not 
his  frailties  be  remembered :  he  was  a  very  great 
man."  And  it  is  good  to  think  that  the  gentle 
spirit  of  this  harassed  vagrant  has  at  length 
found  a  home — the  home  which  his  world- 
wide admirers,  in  each  generation,  make  anew 
for  him  in  their  hearts.  He  prophesied  it  for 
himself  in  The  Traveller , 

Creation's  heir,  the  world,  the  world  is  mine ! 

Like  Gray's  and  Cowper's,  Goldsmith's  great- 
ness as  an  English  poet  needs  explaining.  By 
the  side  of  Chaucer  and  Spenser,  Shakespeare 
and  Milton,  the  "  great "  poets  of  the  Johnsonian 
epoch  were  puny  weaklings.  Nevertheless,  as 
we  look  back  at  them,  we  see  them  towering  up 
above  their  still  smaller  contemporaries  with  all 
the  mountainous  importance  of  sand-hills  on  the 
Belgian  shore. 

In  the  days  of  Chaucer,  when  Englishmen 
found  that  they  had  assimilated  the  Normans 
instead  of  becoming  an  island  Normandy  ;  and 
in  the  days  of  Shakespeare,  when  England  had 


MO  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

beaten  Spain  ;  and,  again,  in  the  days  of  Blake 
and  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  and  Shelley 
and  Keats,  when  the  French  Revolution  had 
shaken  all  human  institutions  to  their  founda- 
tions— in  such  days  it  was  inevitable  that  giant 
poets  should  arise.  But,  under  the  earlier 
Georges,  when  cynicism  had  spread  from  politics 
to  every  part  of  life,  there  was  not  enough  fresh 
air  for  a  great  poet  to  breathe  in.  It  was  an  age 
not  for  poets  but  for  satirists  and  critics  and 
wits.  A  towny  smartness  became  the  key-note 
of  literature.  But  Goldsmith  persistently  tuned 
his  lyre  in  harmony  with  the  immortal  English 
bards  rather  than  with  the  pipers  and  fiddlers  of 
the  hour.  His  lay  was  mild.  But  it  was  in  the 
right  key,  and  it  is  to  be  honoured  as  a  restful 
and  genial  interlude  in  the  vast  music  of  English 
poetry.  He  was  one  of  the  careful  and  interest- 
ing performers  who  helped  to  keep  the  instrument 
in  tune  against  the  day  when  bolder  and  stronger 
hands  should  make  it  resound  once  more  with 
the  mightiest  harmonies. 


WILLIAM  COWPER 

TF  the  author  of  The  Task  could  have  fore- 
known that  he  would  survive  in  English 
literature  by  virtue  of  his  casual  letters  rather 
than  of  his  deliberate  poetry,  and  that  his  fame 
as  a  poet  would  ultimately  rest  upon  a  comic 
ballad  written  in  a  single  night,  he  would  have 
had  some  justification  for  the  melancholy  which 
brooded  over  his  life.  Nowadays  it  is  more  of 
a  task  to  read  Cowper's  most  ambitious  poem 
than  it  was  for  the  poet  to  write  it ;  and  more 
than  one  reader  of  this  book  will  wonder  at  his 
inclusion  in  a  volume  which  has  not  made  room 
for  Campbell,  Thomson,  and  Southey.  Never- 
theless, Cowper,  like  Gray,  claims  a  place  among 
his  betters,  because  he  did  after  all  succeed  in 
implanting  at  least  one  work  deep  in  the  heart 
of  the  people.  And  when  the  people  decline 
to  give  up  the  galloping  John  Gilpin,  and  the 
Imperialist  Boadicea,  and  the  haunting  Alex- 

141 


142     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

ander  Selkirk,  the  people  show  themselves  good 
critics. 

Cowper's  father,  the  Rev.  John  Cowper,  D.D., 
was  rector  of  Berkhamsted  and  chaplain  to 
George  the  Second  ;  and  the  great-uncle  after 
whom  he  was  named  had  filled  the  high  posi- 
tion of  Lord  Chancellor  under  Queen  Anne  and 
George  the  First.  His  mother  was  a  Donne, 
of  the  same  family  as  the  bishop  and  poet  of 
that  name,  and  though  she  died  when  her  son 
was  only  six  years  old,  her  memory  was 
cherished  by  him  in  after-life  with  most  affec- 
tionate regard.  All  who  know  anything  of  the 
name  of  Cowper  are  familiar  with  the  lines 
written  on  the  receipt  of  his  mother's  picture, 
fifty  years  after  her  death,  in  which  he  says  : — 

My  mother !  when  I  learn'd  that  thou  wast  dead, 
Say,  wast  thou  conscious  of  the  tears  I  shed  ? 
Hover'd  thy  spirit  o'er  thy  sorrowing  son, 
Wretch  even  then,  life's  journey  just  begun  ? 
Perhaps  thou  gav'st  me,  though  unfelt,  a  kiss ; 
Perhaps  a  tear,  if  souls  can  weep  in  bliss — 
Ah,  that  maternal  smile ! — it  answers — Yes. 

With  the  wound  of  his  great  sorrow  still 
bleeding,  the  poor  sensitive  child  was  sent  to  a 
boarding-school  where,  to  his  shrinking  nature, 


WILLIAM  COWPER  M3 

the  change  from  a  comfortable  home  was  ren- 
dered acutely  painful.  He  said  : — 

I  had  hardships  of  various  kinds  to  conflict  with, 
which  I  felt  more  sensibly  in  proportion  to  the  tender- 
ness with  which  I  had  been  treated  at  home.  But 
my  chief  affliction  consisted  in  my  being  singled  out 
from  all  the  other  boys  by  a  lad  of  about  fifteen  years 
of  age  as  a  proper  object  on  whom  he  might  let  loose 
the  cruelty  of  his  temper.  I  choose  to  conceal  a 
particular  recital  of  many  acts  of  barbarity  with 
which  he  made  it  his  business  continually  to  perse- 
cute me.  It  will  be  sufficient  to  say  that  his  savage 
treatment  of  me  impressed  such  a  dread  of  his  figure 
upon  my  mind  that  I  well  remember  being  afraid  to 
lift  my  eyes  upon  him  higher  than  to  his  knees,  and 
that  I  knew  him  better  by  his  shoe-buckles  than  by 
any  other  part  of  his  dress.  May  the  Lord  pardon 
him,  and  may  we  meet  in  glory  ! 

It  speaks  worlds  for  Cowper's  charity  that  he 
should  be  able  to  tolerate  the  idea  of  meeting 
such  a  wretch  again,  either  here  or  hereafter. 

Fortunately  a  liability  to  inflammation  of  the 
eyes  made  it  desirable  that  he  should  be  taken 
from  school  for  a  season  and  placed  in  the  house 
of  an  oculist.  Here  he  remained  in  less  discom- 
fort for  two  years,  and  then  proceeded  to  West- 
minster School,  where  he  continued  until  his 
eighteenth  year,  joining  freely  in  boyish  sports, 


144     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

and  becoming  sufficiently  familiar  with  Latin 
and  Greek  to  render  classical  studies  a  delight 
to  him  in  later  life.  Destined  for  the  Bar,  he 
next  spent  three  years  in  an  attorney's  office  ; 
but  flirtations,  "giggling  and  making  giggle," 
with  his  cousins, Theodora  and  Harriet,  daughters 
of  Ashley  Cowper,  then  resident  in  Southampton 
Row,  were  much  more  congenial  occupation  than 
the  study  of  the  law.  The  father  of  these  ladies 
used  to  wear  a  white  hat  lined  with  yellow,  and 
as  he  was  also  of  small  stature,  Cowper  remarked 
slyly  that  the  little  man  would  one  day  be 
picked  by  mistake  for  a  mushroom.  One  is 
tempted  to  wonder  if  this  joke  offended  the 
little  man's  dignity,  and  if  he  had  it  in  mind 
when  afterwards  he  declined  to  allow  Theodora 
to  become  wife  to  her  cousin,  basing  his  refusal 
on  the  fact  of  their  relationship. 

It  was  a  bitter  disappointment  to  the  young 
people  :  both  remained  unmarried,  and,  though 
they  never  met  again,  each  continued  interested 
in  the  other's  well-being.  It  is  generally  sup- 
posed that  Ashley  Cowper  had  doubts  as  to  his 
nephew's  ability  to  make  a  living.  "  What  will 
you  do  if  you  marry  William  Cowper  ?  "  he 
asked  of  Theodora.  "  Do,  Sir  1 "  she  replied. 


WILLIAM  COWPER  MS 

"Wash  all  day,  and  ride  out  on  the  great  dog  all 
night !  "  Which  shows  at  least  that  the  lady  had 
some  spirit ;  and  had  her  lover  evinced  as  much, 
it  is  not  unlikely  he  would  have  won  his  cousin, 
and  so  changed  the  whole  current  of  his  life. 

Cowper  had  chambers  for  some  years  in  the 
Inner  Temple,  and  was  formally  called  to  the 
Bar.  But  he  never  practised,  and  his  time  was 
devoted  more  to  literary  than  to  legal  studies. 
He  became  a  member  of  the  Nonesense  Club, 
which  consisted  of  seven  Westminster  men  who 
met  and  dined  together  every  Thursday  ;  was 
friendly  with  Thornton  and  Colman,  wits  of  the 
period  ;  admired  the  poetry  of  Churchill ;  and 
also  contributed  papers  to  the  Connoisseur  and  to 
the  St.  James's  Chronicle. 

In  one  of  the  poems  addressed  to  "  Delia"  (his 
Cousin  Theodora),  written  at  this  period,  there 
seems  to  be  a  foreboding  of  the  crisis  that  was 
drawing  upon  him.  He  cries  : — 

Bid  adieu,  my  sad  heart,  bid  adieu  to  thy  peace ! 
Thy  pleasure  is  past,  and  thy  sorrows  increase  ; 
See  the  shadows  of  evening  how  far  they  extend, 
And  a  long  night  is  coming,  that  never  may  end ; 
For  the  sun  is  now  set  that  enlivened  the  scene, 
And  an  age  must  be  past  ere  it  rises  again. 
K 


146     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

The  "  long  night "  overtook  Cowper  when  he 
was  thirty-two,  and  still  resident  in  the  Temple. 
His  nomination  as  Clerk  of  the  Journals  in 
the  House  of  Lords  had  been  secured  for 
him  by  his  kinsman,  Major  Cowper,  and  for 
some  months  he  gave  up  his  whole  time  to 
preparation  for  the  office.  Inborn  timidity, 
however,  and  distrust  of  his  own  powers  ren- 
dered him  miserable  ;  and  when  the  day  of 
examination  arrived  his  mind  was  quite  un- 
hinged, and  fear  and  despair  drove  him  to  an 
attempt  upon  his  life.  Months  of  confinement 
ensued,  under  the  care  of  Dr.  Cotton,  at  St. 
Alban's. 

When  sufficiently  recovered,  Cowper  secured 
lodgings  at  Huntingdon,  and  settled  down  to  a 
retired  life,  his  relatives  rendering  him  timely 
assistance.  He  had  now  become  decidedly,  al- 
most fanatically,  religious,  and  soon  found  an 
introduction  to  the  household  of  the  Rev. 
William  Unwin,  an  evangelical  clergyman.  Of 
this  household,  consisting  of  father  and  mother, 
with  a  son  and  daughter,  all  as  extremely  pious 
as  himself,  Cowper  speedily  became  a  permanent 
inmate.  Of  their  manner  of  life  he  has  left 


WILLIAM  COWPER  147 

us  a  description   in  one  of  his  many  charming 

letters  : 

As  to  amusements,  I  mean  what  the  world  calls 
such,  we  have  none.  The  place  indeed  swarms  with 
them ;  and  cards  and  dancing  are  the  professed  busi- 
ness of  almost  all  the  gentle  inhabitants  of  Hunting- 
don. We  refuse  to  take  part  in  them,  or  to  be 
accessories  to  this  way  of  murdering  our  time,  and 
by  so  doing  have  acquired  the  name  of  Methodists. 
Having  told  you  how  we  do  not  spend  our  time,  I  will 
next  say  how  we  do.  We  breakfast  commonly  be- 
tween eight  and  nine  ;  till  eleven  we  read  either  the 
scripture,  or  the  sermons  of  some  faithful  preacher  of 
those  holy  mysteries ;  at  eleven  we  attend  divine  ser- 
vice, which  is  performed  here  twice  every  day,  and 
from  twelve  to  three  we  separate,  and  amuse  our- 
selves as  we  please.  During  that  interval,  I  either 
read  in  my  own  apartment,  or  walk,  or  ride,  or  work 
in  the  garden.  We  seldom  sit  an  hour  after  dinner, 
but,  if  the  weather  permits,  adjourn  to  the  garden, 
where,  with  Mrs.  Unwin  and  her  son,  I  have  gener- 
ally the  pleasure  of  religious  conversation  until  tea- 
time.  If  it  rains,  or  is  too  windy  for  walking,  we 
either  converse  within  doors  or  sing  some  hymn  of 
Martin's  collection,  and  by  the  help  of  Mrs.  Unwin's 
harpsichord,  make  up  a  tolerable  concert,  in  which 
our  hearts  I  hope  are  the  best  performers.  After  tea 
we  sally  forth  to  walk  in  good  earnest.  Mrs.  Unwin 
is  a  good  walker,  and  we  have  generally  travelled 
about  four  miles  before  we  see  home  again.  When 


148     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

the  days  are  short  we  make  this  excursion  in  the 
former  part  of  the  day,  between  church-time  and 
dinner.  At  night  we  read  and  converse  as  before  till 
supper,  and  commonly  finish  the  evening  either  with 
hymns  or  a  sermon,  and  last  of  all  the  family  are 
called  to  prayers. 

After  two  years  of  this  sort  of  life  which  he 
describes  as  "  consistent  with  the  utmost  cheer- 
fulness," though  many  will  take  leave  to  doubt 
it,  the  Unwin  household  was  broken  up  by  the 
death  of  its  head  through  a  fall  from  his  horse. 
Mrs.  Unwin  and  Cowper  joined  their  resources, 
and  settled  together  at  Olney,  in  Buckingham- 
shire. "  The  house,"  says  Professor  Goldwin 
Smith,  "  in  which  the  pair  took  up  their  abode 
was  dismal,  prison-like,  and  tumble-down.  .  .  . 
It  looked  upon  the  Market  Place,  but  it  was 
in  the  close  neighbourhood  of  Silver  End,  the 
worst  part  of  Olney.  In  winter  the  cellars  were 
full  of  water.  There  were  no  pleasant  walks 
within  easy  reach,  and  in  winter  Cowper's  only 
exercise  was  pacing  thirty  yards  of  gravel,  with 
the  dreary  supplement  of  dumb-bells."  The 
town  itself  was  a  dull  one  on  the  banks  of  the 
"  slow  winding "  Ouse,  with  "  occurrences  as 
scarce  as  cucumbers  at  Christmas," 


COWPER'S  FAVOURITE  SEAT   AT    EARTHAM.   LOOKING  TOWARDS 

THE  ISLE  OK  WIGHT:  WITH  PORTRAITS  OF  HAYLEY  (BY  BAINES), 

YOUNG   HAYLEY  (BY   HUNMAN),  CHARLOTTE   SMITH   (BY   OPIE), 

COWPER  (BY  ABBOT),  AND  ROMNEY  (BY  HIMSELF.) 

After  IV.  Harvey. 


WILLIAM  COWPER  149 

The  great  attraction  of  Olney  was  the  Rev. 
John  Newton,  the  evangelical  curate  of  the 
parish,  who  soon  obtained  considerable  influ- 
ence over  Cowper,  and  so  tightened  the  strain 
of  pious  devotion  that  the  poet's  mind  once 
more  gave  way.  Through  the  dismal  shadows 
of  sixteen  months  of  depression,  Mrs.  Unwin 
nursed  him  night  and  day,  and  his  recovery  was 
owing  in  large  measure  to  her  unremitting  care. 
Wisely,  too,  she  urged  upon  him  the  desira- 
bility of  distracting  his  thoughts  from  himself 
by  poetic  composition,  though  the  subject  sug- 
gested—  The  Progress  of  Error — was  not  the 
happiest.  As  the  result,  Cowper's  first  published 
volume  was  issued  in  1782. 

To  Lady  Austen,  a  woman  of  quite  a  different 
stamp,  is  due  the  credit  of  inspiring  another  of 
Cowper's  poems — The  Task.  The  lively  widow 
of  a  baronet,  she  visited  Olney  in  1781,  met  the 
poet,  was  attracted  by  him,  and  had  rooms  fitted 
for  herself  to  be  near  him.  "A  person  that  has 
seen  much  of  the  world,  and  understands  it  well, 
has  high  spirits,  a  lively  fancy,  and  great  readi- 
ness of  conversation  " ;  so  he  writes  of  her.  She 
told  him  the  story  of  John  Gilpin,  which  kept 


iso  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

him  laughing  half  the  night  through,  and  which 
by  the  next  morning  he  had  turned  into  the 
famous  ballad.  When  she  urged  him  to  try  his 
hand  at  blank  verse,  he  replied,  "  I  will,  if  you 
will  give  me  a  subject."  "  You  can  write  on  any 
subject,"  she  answered,  looking  up  from  the  sofa 
on  which  she  reclined.  "  Write  upon  this  sofa." 
So  was  begun  The  Task,  the  first  book  of  which 
is  entitled  The  Sofa. 

I  sing  the  Sofa.     I  who  lately  sang 
Truth,  Hope,  and  Charity,  and  touched  with  awe 
The  solemn  chords,  and  with  a  trembling  hand 
Escaped  with  pain  from  that  adventurous  flight, 
Now  seek  repose  upon  an  humbler  theme ; 
The  theme  though  humble,  yet  august  and  proud 
The  occasion — for  the  Fair  commands  the  song. 

The  few  years  during  which  Lady  Austen 
sojourned  at  Olney  were  of  the  brightest  in 
Cowper's  history.  It  was  hardly  to  be  ex- 
pected, however,  that  Mrs.  Unwin,  who  was 
so  strongly  attached  to  him,  and  had  done  so 
much  for  him,  would  take  quietly  the  presence 
of  a  rival.  A  breach  occurred,  the  "  threefold 
cord "  was  broken,  and,  though  repairs  were 
effected,  a  final  severance  took  place  in  1783, 
before  The  Task  was  completed.  This  poem,  with 


WILLIAM  COWPER  151 

Tirocinium,  a  rhyming  treatise  on  education,  and 
The  Diverting  History  of  John  Gilpin,  formed  the 
contents  of  Cowper' s  second  published  volume. 
It  brought  him  fame,  and  secured  for  him  the 
place  he  holds  in  English  literature,  to  say 
nothing  of  a  pension  of  ^300  a  year.  One 
compliment,  of  an  amusingly  doubtful  nature, 
it  obtained  for  him  by  bringing  to  Olney  the 
clerk  of  All  Saints',  Northampton,  with  a  request 
that  he  would  write  the  verses  appended  to 
the  annual  records  of  mortality  in  that  parish. 
Cowper  suggested  modestly  that  there  were 
several  men  of  genius  in  the  parish,  particularly 
Mr.  Cox,  a  first-rate  maker  of  verses.  The 
clerk's  reply  was  that  he  had  already  obtained 
verses  from  the  gentleman  named,  but  he  was 
a  man  of  such  wide  reading  that  the  people 
could  not  understand  him. 

In  his  version  of  Homer,  Cowper  aimed  at 
improving  on  Pope  by  giving  a  literal  transla- 
tion, and  it  is  generally  admitted  that  he  has 
succeeded  in  making  it  literally  dull.  Some  of 
his  hymns  and  shorter  pieces  have  won  for  him 
far  higher  appreciation  and  a  far  wider  audience. 
Thousands  of  persons  who  would  not  care 


152  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

to  commit  themselves  as  to  whether  Homer 
wrote  in  Greek  or  in  Latin,  know  in  their 
hearts  that  God  moves  in  a  mysterious  way  and 
Sometimes  a  light  surprises  are  somehow  better  than 
the  mass  of  hymns  and  pious  verses. 

After  the  departure  of  Lady  Austen,  Cowper's 
life  was  brightened  by  frequent  visits  from  his 
cousin,  Lady  Hesketh,  sister  to  his  early  love, 
Theodora.  She  furthered  his  removal  to  Weston, 
a  healthier  house  in  the  neighbourhood,  belong- 
ing to  Mr.  Throckmorton,  a  Roman  Catholic 
gentleman,  with  whom  and  his  wife  the  poet 
was  on  very  friendly  terms.  Here,  however, 
his  old  malady  returned,  and  Mrs.  Unwin  was 
stricken  with  paralysis.  She  died  in  1796  at 
East  Dereham,  whither  she  and  Cowper  had 
been  removed  by  their  friend  Hayley,  in  hope 
of  physical  benefit.  The  poet,  at  the  sight  of 
her  dead  face,  uttered  one  passionate  cry,  and 
never  spoke  of  her  again.  During  the  three 
and  a  half  years  longer  through  which  he  lived, 
silence  and  mental  darkness  were  his  portion. 
The  shadow  was  broken  by  fitful  and  momentary 
gleams,  but  never  lifted.  In  the  February  pre- 
ceding his  death,  on  being  asked  how  he  felt, 


WILLIAM  COWPER  153 

he  answered,  "  I  feel  unutterable  despair."  He 
died  quietly  on  25th  April,  1800,  in  his  sixty- 
ninth  year. 

In  his  poetry  English  rural  life,  the  English 
appreciation  of  domestic  comfort  and  the  Eng- 
lish fondness  for  moral  reflection  find  copious 
and  not  unhappy  expression.  His  pictures  of 
natural  scenery  and  household  ways  betray  the 
photographer  rather  than  the  artist.  With 
almost  feminine  minuteness  we  are  made  to 
see  what  is  to  be  seen  in  the  object  before 
us ;  but  there  is  no  hint  let  fall  of  aught  beyond, 
either  in  the  soul  of  the  singer  or  in  that  vaster 
soul  which  it  is  the  glory  of  the  greater  singers 
to  reveal.  All  the  same,  he  rendered  services  to 
English  poetry  even  on  its  technical  side.  His 
best  work  exhibits  ease  and  fluency  without 
degenerating  into  glibness.  Under  Pope,  verse 
moved  with  the  stately  slowness  of  a  minuet : 
but  Cowper  taught  it  to  run  like  a  child  escaped 
from  school  and  to  gallop  like  John  Gilpin's 
horse. 


THOMAS   CHATTERTON 

£)ANTE  GABRIEL  ROSSETTI  declared 
that  "  the  absolutely  miraculous  Chatter- 
ton  "  was  "  without  any  reservation  whatever  as 
great  as  any  of  the  English  poets."  Such  words 
as  these,  coming  from  a  man  who  was  not  only 
himself  a  poet  but  also  one  of  the  discoverers 
of  Blake  and  FitzGerald,  cannot  be  laughed 
away.  Indeed,  the  danger  in  treating  of 
Chatterton  is  not  lest  one  should  lift  him  too 
high,  but  lest  one  may  thrust  him  too  low. 
There  is  an  idea  abroad  that  the  pathos  of 
his  death  has  kept  his  poetry  alive  :  yet 
the  truth  is  that  his  poetical  achievement  has 
been  generally  lost  sight  of  in  the  shadow  of 
his  personal  tragedy.  It  was  by  performance 
as  well  as  by  promise  that  he  earned  the  title 
of  a  great  English  poet. 

Born  and  reared  in  the  shadow  of  St.  Mary 
Redcliffe,  Bristol,  Chatterton  must  have  felt  that 

J54 


THOMAS  CHATTERTON  155 

"wonder  of  mansions,"  as  he  affectionately  called 
the  ancient  pile,  a  very  part  of  himself.  To  its 
muniment  room  he  owed  his  delight  in  the 
past,  and  to  his  ancestors,  perhaps,  his  too  free 
jesting  with  death.  For  a  hundred  and  twenty 
years  those  ancestors  had  been  sextons  at  St. 
Mary's  and  had  gathered  home,  generation  by 
generation,  its  parishioners  to  the  old  church- 
yard. 

Chatterton's  father  had  broken  the  sexton 
chain.  More  ambitious  than  his  forbears,  he 
obtained  the  mastership  of  a  free  school  a  few 
yards  from  St.  Mary's,  and  was  appointed  "  sub- 
chaunter  "  in  Bristol  Cathedral.  '  But  when  little 
Thomas  saw  the  light,  on  2oth  November,  1752, 
his  poor  young  mother  had  been  a  widow  for 
four  months,  and  was  supporting  herself  and  his 
two-year-old  sister  by  a  little  dame's  school  and 
by  taking  in  needlework. 

Like  Goldsmith  the  boy  was  thought  a  dullard. 
He  was  sent  home  from  his  first  school  as  in- 
capable of  receiving  instruction,  and  he  would 
sit  for  hours  crying  softly  to  himself,  or  wrapped 
in  strange  abstraction.  But  the  old  manuscripts 
and  ancient  parchments,  which  were  ever  after- 


156     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

wards  to  be  his  chief  preoccupation,  unsealed  his 
eyes.  His  mother  says  that  one  day,  when  the 
boy  was  between  six  and  seven  years  old,  she 
was  tearing  up  an  old  music  folio  which  had 
belonged  to  her  husband,  when  the  illuminated 
capitals  took  the  child's  fancy  and  "he  fell  in 
love  with  it." 

It  became  an  easy  way  of  teaching  him  his 
letters,  and  then  he  was  coaxed  into  reading  by 
the  aid  of  a  black-letter  Bible. 

Chatterton's  "  sleepless  soul "  once  aroused 
never  again  slept.  "  He  read  from  the  moment 
he  waked,  which  was  early,  until  he  went  to  bed, 
if  they  would  let  him."  He  pounced  upon  every 
scrap  of  old  learning,  and  drew  and  designed,  in 
charcoal  and  pencil,  for  hours  together.  Heraldry 
and  mediaeval  subjects  had  the  greatest  charm  for 
him,  and  he  was  unusually  fortunate  in  having 
the  run  of  the  two  boxes  of  old  documents  which 
his  father  had  brought  home  years  before  from 
a  kind  of  spring  cleaning  at  St.  Mary's  muni- 
ment room  as  waste-paper. 

Here  is  one  of  the  few  cases  in  which  vandal- 
ism has  had  good  results.  That  MSS.  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  even  if  they  recorded  nothing 


u 


THOMAS  CHATTERTON  157 

more  than  obscure  births  and  marriages  and 
deaths,  should  be  lightly  dispersed,  was,  in  it- 
self, outrageous  :  but  it  was  from  these  old 
manuscripts  that  Chatterton  derived  his  know- 
ledge of  Anglo-Saxon  and  the  idea  of  producing 
a  series  of  MSS.  supposed  to  be  the  newly- 
discovered  writings  of  one  Thomas  Rowley,  a 
priest  of  the  fifteenth  century.  Chatterton  has 
written  sadly  :« — 

Rowley    .    .    .    my  first,  chief  curse  ! 
For  had  I  never  known  the  antique  lore, 
I  ne'er  had  ventured  from  my  peaceful  shore 
To  be  the  wreck  of  promises  and  hopes, 
A  Boy  of  Learning  and  a  Bard  of  Tropes. 

Chatterton's  second  school  was  Colston's  Hos- 
pital— the  Bluecoat  School  of  Bristol.  His  mad 
thirst  for  old  learning  and  books  was  now  re- 
markable. All  his  small  sums  of  pocket-money 
went  to  the  circulating  library.  He  would  read 
when  others  were  at  play,  and  often  pass  the 
whole  day  without  eating,  especially  avoiding 
animal  food,  which  he  said  impaired  the  intellect. 
His  aim,  like  Pope's,  was  to  be  a  poet,  but  a 
poet  whose  fame  should  sound  to  the  ends  of 
the  earth.  As  a  child  he  had  said  when  asked 


i58  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

by  a  potter  what  device  he  would  like  painted  on 
a  small  bowl :  "  Paint  me  an  angel  with  wings  and 
a  trumpet  to  trumpet  my  name  over  the  world." 

The  boy  of  fifteen  was  apprenticed  to  Lambert, 
an  attorney  in  Bristol,  the  day  he  left  school. 
His  new  master  was  sour-tempered,  and  the 
proud  young  poet  had  to  sleep  with  the  foot- 
boy  and  take  his  meals  with  the  servants.  It  is 
said  that  the  footman  was  frequently  sent  into 
the  office  to  see  if  Chatterton  was  there,  and 
if  Attorney  Lambert  found  the  youth  writing 
poetry  instead  of  doing  professional  work,  he 
would  angrily  tear  into  pieces  what  he  called 
Chatterton's  "  stuff." 

In  spite,  however,  of  this  somewhat  natural 
interference  from  the  undiscerning  attorney 
Chatterton  managed  to  compose  during  this 
period  the  greater  number  of  the  beautiful 
Rowley  poems — those  poems  which  have  been 
one  of  the  chief  sources  of  the  modern  Romantic 
Movement  in  English  poetry. 

There  is  little  doubt  now  that  Chatterton 
wrote  his  verses  first  of  all  in  modern  English, 
and  then,  by  the  help  of  an  Anglo-Saxon  glossary, 
compiled  by  himself,  translated  them  into  the 


THOMAS  CHATTERTON  159 

Rowleian   dialect  or  pseudo  Middle  English,  in 
which  he  gave  them  to  the  world. 

One  of  the  finest  of  these  poems,  An  Exceknte 
Ballad  of  Charitle^  was  written  in  London,  a 
month  before  his  death,  when  his  courage  and 
resources  were  well-nigh  done,  and  his  "  solemn 
agony  "  (as  Shelley  has  so  finely  and  reverently 
called  it)  was  gathering  to  its  tragic  close.  It  is 
concluded  that  Chatterton  was  speaking  to  him- 
self in  these  lines  addressed  to  the  "  hapless 
pilgrim  " : — 

Haste  to  thy  church-glebe-house,  accursed  man  ! 
Haste  to  thy  grave,  thy  only  sleeping  bed. 
Cold  as  the  clay  which  will  grow  on  thy  head 
Are  Charity  and  Love  among  high  elves  ; 
Knightes  and  barons  live  for  pleasure  and  themselves. 

The  following  remarkable  lines  from  the  same 
poem,  describing  the  breaking  of  a  summer 
storm,  justify  Coleridge's  description  of  Chatter- 
ton  as  "  free  Nature's  genial  child." 

The  gathered  storm  is  ripe ;  the  big  drops  fall, 
The  sun-burnt  meadows  smoke  and  drink  the  rain ; 
The  coming  ghastness  doth  the  cattle  pall, 
And  the  full  flocks  are  driving  o'er  the  plain ; 
Dashed  from  the  clouds,  the  waters  fly  again ; 
The  welkin  opes  ;  the  yellow  lightning  flies, 
And  the  hot  fiery  steam  in  the  broad  flashings  dies. 


160  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

It  la  remarkable  how  closely  the  youth  kept 
the  secret  of  his  Rowley  forgeries,  even  bemus- 
ing the  friendly  but  dull  Dr.  Barrett,  who  was 
an  antiquarian  authority  in  Bristol,  and  the  owner 
of  a  library  useful  for  Chatterton's  purposes. 

One  of  his  friends  has  related  how  Chatterton 
would  often  say,  when  a  new  poem  had  just  been 
completed  : — 

Come,  you  and  I  will  take  a  walk  in  the  meadow. 
I  have  got  the  cleverest  thing  for  you  that  ever  was. 
It  is  worth  half-a-crown  merely  to  have  a  sight  of  it, 
and  to  hear  me  read  it  to  you. 

Two  publishers  were  tried  with  the  Rowley 
"  finds "  without  success,  and  then  the  happy 
notion  occurred  to  Chatterton  of  sending  them 
to  Horace  Walpole,  who  was  endeavouring  to 
revive  a  taste  for  the  Gothic  period  in  art. 

A  patron,  in  Chatterton's  day,  was  still  part 
of  the  necessary  and  desirable  "  plant "  of  an  in- 
digent poet,  and  Walpole  by  his  tastes,  wealth, 
and  social  standing  seemed  the  man  most  plainly 
indicated.  What  would  have  been  the  future 
course  of  the  poor  widow's  son  had  Walpole 
been  "  his  brother's  keeper  "  is  a  matter  of  use- 
less conjecture.  As  it  was,  Walpole  showed  the 


THOMAS  CHATTERTON  161 

petted  selfishness  of  a  superfine  dilettante,  who  is 
worried  by  frequent  appeals  from  less  fortunate 
men,  and  his  unhandsome  conduct  scarred  a 
wound  in  the  lad's  proud  sensitive  heart  which 
smarted  to  the  end. 

But  Chatterton's  serving  days  in  Bristol  were 
numbered.  As  a  freelance  he  had  had  his 
writings  accepted  by  the  Bristol  papers  and  the 
London  magazines  :  and  with  the  hardy  valour 
of  one  of  his  own  knights  upon  him,  he  felt  he 
must  ride  forth  to  take  the  town  by  storm  and 
plant  his  ensign  upon  its  loftiest  pinnacles. 

He  had  stayed  in  Bristol  long  enough,  how- 
ever, to  earn  five  shillings  for  a  false  pedigree 
from  a  well-to-do,  gullible  pewterer,  and  to  hoax 
the  whole  town  with  a  sham  description,  "  from 
an  old  Manuscript,"  of  the  opening  of  Bristol 
Bridge  in  1248.  It  remained  for  him  to  draw 
up,  and  leave  open  upon  his  desk,  a  document 
which  produced  such  an  effect  upon  Attorney 
Lambert  that  he  cancelled  his  apprentice's  inden- 
tures, and  was  clearly  glad  to  let  so  strange  and 
uncanny  a  fledgling  go  free.  This  last  will  and 
testament  of  Thomas  Chatterton,  "  Executed  in 
the  presence  of  Omniscience  this  I4th  of 


162     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

April,    1770,"   is   still  preserved    in   the  Bristol 
Institution. 

Whether  Chatterton  really  intended  to  commit 
suicide  is  doubtful.  It  seems  more  probable  that 
his  savage  fitful  moods  with  his  fellow  servants 
having  failed,  he  tried  this  plan  of  scaring  his 
master  into  releasing  him.  The  will,  with  its 
charming  nonsense  and  absurd  "  items,"  reads 
too  satirically  to  have  been  seriously  intended  : 
though  the  letter  Chatterton  wrote  to  Dr.  Barrett, 
who  had  moved  the  youth  to  tears  over  a  former 
threat  of  suicide,  both  indicates  some  mad  in- 
tention on  Chatterton's  part,  and  at  the  same 
time  reveals  the  mainspring  of  all  his  actions. 
He  says  in  answer  to  Barrett's  charge  that 
he  was  drawn  to  "  the  horrible  crime  of  self- 
murder  "  by  "  the  bad  company  and  principles  " 
he  had  adopted  : — 

In  regard  to  my  Motives  for  the  supposed  rash- 
ness, I  shall  observe  that  I  keep  no  worse  Company 
than  myself;  I  never  drink  to  Excess,  and  have,  with- 
out Vanity,  too  much  Sense  to  be  attached  to  the 
mercenary  retailers  of  Iniquity.  No,  it  is  my 
PRIDE,  my  damn'd,  native,  unconquerable  Pride, 
that  plunges  me  into  Distraction.  You  must  know 
that  the  I9~2oth  of  my  Composition  is  Pride.  I 


THOMAS  CHATTERTON  163 

must  either  live  a  Slave,  a  Servant ;  to  have  no  will 
of  my  own,  no  Sentiments  of  my  own  which  I  may 
freely  declare  as  such ; — or  DIE.  Perplexing  Alter- 
native !  but  it  distracts  me  to  think  of  it.  I  will 
endeavour  to  learn  Humility,  but  it  cannot  be  here. 
What  it  may  cost  me  in  the  trial  Heaven  knows ! 

Chatterton  settled  in  London  towards  the  end 
of  April,  1770 — a  mere  boy  of  barely  eighteen, 
with  a  little  store  of  money  and  a  very  large 
store  of  hope.  He  lodged  in  Shoreditch  at  a 
plasterer's,  and  took  his  meals  with  a  Mrs. 
Ballance,  a  relative,  who  stayed  in  the  same 
house.  Always  abstemious  in  diet,  his  dinner 
became  often  nothing  more  than  a  tart  and  a 
glass  of  cold  water.  The  plasterer's  son,  who 
shared  Chatterton's  bedroom,  said  he  sometimes 
saw  him  pull  a  sheep's  tongue  out  of  his  pocket 
to  nibble  at,  but  this  was  the  only  animal  food 
he  seems  to  have  eaten.  The  same  boy  says  he 
never  seemed  to  sleep,  for  he  did  not  go  to  bed 
till  three  or  four  in  the  morning,  and  yet  was 
always  awake  first.  Semi-starvation  and  feverish 
brain-work  seemed  to  have  reduced  him  almost 
to  a  spirit.  He  tried  every  form  of  literature 
from  a  sprightly  extravaganza  for  Marylebone 
Gardens  to  a  poem  in  the  Gospel  Magazine. 


r64     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Before  he  left  Bristol  Chatterton's  chief  hopes 
had  been  centred  on  certain  political  writings. 
From  these  he  had  hoped  to  earn  a  living  wage, 
and,  in  fact,  he  was  for  a  brief  space  successful. 
But  the  tide  of  political  opinion  turned.  To 
complete  his  disappointment,  Beckford,  the  Lord 
Mayor,  who  had  been  interested  in  him  and 
disposed  to  be  a  patron,  died  suddenly  in  the 
month  of  June. 

Nevertheless,  in  his  earlier  letters  home, 
Chatterton  wrote  in  high  spirits.  He  had  been 
to  see  the  sights  in  town  and  to  sit  in  the  literary 
coffee-houses.  He  seems  to  have  met  the  usual 
number  of  boastful  gossips,  whose  acquaintance 
includes  all  the  great  and  whose  generous  pro- 
mises are  but  sounding  brass.  All  the  magazines 
were  accepting  his  poems  and  articles,  and  he 
was  about  to  write  "a  voluminous  history  of 
London."  Each  letter  brims  with  sweet  solici- 
tude for  his  mother  and  his  sister.  He  says, 
"  I  will  send  you  two  silks  this  summer,"  and 
again,  "I  am  now  about  an  Oratorio,  which,  when 
finished,  will  purchase  you  a  gown."  Out  of 
his  first  adequate  earnings — which  were  the  five 
guineas  from  Marylebone  Gardens  —  he  sent 


THOMAS  CHATTERTON  165 

home  a  box  of  presents.  "  Red  china  "  and  "  a 
snuff-box  right  French,  and  very  curious  "  for 
his  mother,  a  silver  fan  for  his  sister,  and 
"  some  British  herb  tobacco  for  my  grand- 
mother." 

Life,  however,  was  not  so  rosy  as  he  painted 
it.  Mrs.  Ballance  declared  that  he  was  "  as 
proud  as  Lucifer."  He  soon  got  across  with 
her  for  calling  him  "  Cousin  Tommy,"  and 
asked  her  whether  she  had  ever  heard  of  a 
poet  being  called  "Tommy"! 

The  plasterer  seems  to  have  observed  little 
about  the  young  poet  in  spite  of  his  brilliant 
grey  eyes,  one  strangely  brighter  than  the  other. 
He  says  laconically  that  "  there  was  something 
manly  and  pleasing  about  him,  and  that  he  did 
not  dislike  the  wenches." 

But  the  months  had  worn  away  and  Chatter- 
ton  found  himself  in  the  hopeless  toils  of  a 
London  August — to  the  wealthy  and  the  patron 
a  few  butterfly  hours  of  golden  delight  by  silver 
seas,  to  the  poor  and  the  dependent  an  endless 
century  of  stifle  and  dirt  in  hot  drab  streets. 
Beckford  was  dead,  the  literary  market  was 
already  overstocked  with  Chatterton's  wares, 


166  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

and  the  tradesmen  would  not  pay  for  what  they 
had  consumed. 

Chatterton  made  one  last  desperate  effort,  and 
tried  to  go  out  to  sea  as  a  surgeon's  mate.  He 
applied  to  Barrett  for  the  necessary  certificate, 
without  revealing  in  any  way  his  destitute  con- 
dition. But — as  with  Goldsmith  thirteen  years 
before — the  scheme  failed.  Chatterton  had  not 
the  happy-go-lucky  temperament  or  the  hardened 
physique  of  a  Goldsmith.  He  had  lost  his  hope 
in  man  and  his  faith  in  God,  and  the  wretched 
despairing  boy  could  not  "learn  Humility."  Un- 
able to  bring  himself  to  borrow  either  from 
Mrs.  Ballance  or  the  plasterer,  he  changed  his 
rooms  to  Holborn  so  that  none  should  know  of 
his  distressing  poverty.  His  landlady  said  after- 
wards that,  knowing  he  had  not  eaten  for  two 
or  three  days,  she  begged  he  would  take  some 
dinner  with  her,  but  he  appeared  affronted,  and 
"  assured  her  he  was  not  hungry." 

Nature  would  stand  no  more.  Over-work, 
anxiety,  lack  of  care  and  nourishment  had  done 
their  fatal  work,  and  the  flame  of  his  wild  spirit 
waxed  and  grew  till  it  burst  all  bounds,  and  in 
one  wild  leap  provoked  that  act  of  self-destruc- 


Q 

M 
X 
H 


THOMAS  CHATTERTON  167 

tion  which  he  anticipated  and  sought  to  excuse 
in  one  of  his  own  essays  as  "  a  noble  insanity  of 
the  soul."  On  Friday  night,  24th  August,  1770, 
Chatterton  locked  the  door  of  his  room  and 
took  arsenic  in  water.  When  later  on  his  room 
was  broken  into  they  found  that  he  had  torn 
every  fragment  of  unpublished  manuscript  that 
he  possessed  into  tiny  pieces  and  scattered  them 
upon  the  floor. 

Thus  ended  this  most  mournful  life.  Pride — 
the  fatal  but  not  wholly  contemptible  "  nineteen- 
twentieths"  of  pride — dominated  him  to  the  end, 
and  the  optimistic  boy  who  had  raised  the  hopes 
of  those  he  loved  best  by  rosy  dreams  and 
golden  prospects  could  not  bring  himself  to  say 
that  his  London  experiment  was  a  failure.  Hard 
common  sense  protests  that  he  ought  to  have 
retreated  to  Bristol  pour  mieux  sauter,  or  to  have 
borrowed  more  money.  But  we  must  not  forget 
that  his  so  tragic  and  pitiful  death  has  raised 
all  over  the  world  the  level  of  consideration 
for  impecunious  genius.  Thus  Chatterton  is 
Poetry's  martyr. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  while  Chatterton  was 
inventing  Rowley  in  the  muniment  room  of 


1 68  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

St.  Mary's,  Macpherson  was  sending  forth  the 
mixture  of  forgery  and  tradition  which  he  labelled 
with  the  name  of  Ossian.  But  while  the  bom- 
bastic Ossian  took  all  Europe  by  storm,  the 
magnificent  Rowley  remains  to  this  day  almost 
unknown  outside  a  narrow  circle.  We  have 
wept  over  Chatterton  long  enough  ;  and  the 
time  has  come  to  dry  our  eyes  and  read  him. 


WILLIAM  BLAKE 

TTOW  many  people  could  give,  off-hand,  any 
account  whatever  of  Gotzenberger  ?  Not 
one  in  a  hundred  thousand.  Yet  this  long-dead 
German  painter  spoke  so  wise  a  word  about  two 
of  our  English  poets  that  a  whole  century  has 
hardly  sufficed  to  bring  all  its  wisdom  to  light. 
"In  England,"  said  Gotzenberger,  "  I  saw  many 
men  of  talent :  but  only  three  men  of  genius. 
They  were  Coleridge,  Flaxman,  and  Blake  ;  and 
the  greatest  of  these  was  Blake." 

Despite  the  apostolic  labours  of  Dante  Gabriel 
Rossetti  and  of  Mr.  Swinburne,  Blake's  immense 
poetical  importance  is  still  far  from  being  gener- 
ally granted.  Thousands  of  readers  who  will- 
ingly bow  before  the  beauty  and  splendour  of 
his  grandest  works  obstinately  go  on  believing 
that  Blake  was  an  amazing  outsider,  a  freak  of 
nature,  or,  if  one  may  use  the  words,  a  gorgeous 
side-show  just  off  the  highway  trodden  by  the 

169 


iyo     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

pageant  of  English  poetry  properly  so-called. 
The  truth  is  that,  so  far  as  his  best  work  is 
concerned,  Blake  is  vitally  linked  both  with 
the  great  poets  who  had  gone  before  him  and 
with  the  great  poets  who  have  come  after.  His 
influence  on  the  rising  generation  of  literary 
men  is  enormous  :  and  it  is  coming  to  be  as 
unthinkable  to  leave  Blake  out  of  a  book  on 
the  greater  English  poets  as  to  leave  out  Keats. 

In  candour,  it  must  be  allowed  that  Blake 
himself  13  largely  responsible  for  the  misunder- 
standings which  have  caused  the  primmer  critics 
to  shunt  him  on  to  a  side-track  and  to  label  him 
as  a  madman.  Having  a  contempt  for  money 
and  for  social  success,  he  saw  no  reason  why 
he  should  make  concessions  to  the  dull  minds 
around  him  ;  and,  accordingly,  he  was  for  ever 
shocking  his  hearers  by  speaking  of  the  world  of 
imagination  as  easily  and  boldly  as  other  men 
spoke  of  the  world  of  every-day  fact.  What  was 
the  hard-headed  eighteenth  century  to  make  of 
a  man  who  calmly  remarked  that  he  had  met 
Milton  on  the  stairs  ;  that  he  had  sketched  the 
heads  of  Moses  and  Julius  Caesar  who  had 
given  him  sittings;  that  he  had  drawn  the  ghost 


WILLIAM  BLAKE  171 

of  a  flea  ;  and  that  in  his  forty-fourth  year  he 
had  witnessed  a  fairy's  funeral  and  had  seen  the 
fairy's  tiny  body  borne  in  a  rose-leaf  to  the 
grave  ? 

Blake  was  a  Londoner,  bred  and  born,  as 
appears  from  his  Cockney  rhyming  of  "  Wardle" 
with  "  caudle."  His  father  was  a  fairly  well-to- 
do  hosier  of  Broad  Street,  Golden  Square,  who, 
although  he  could  not  send  his  son  to  a  public 
school  and  a  university,  was  enlightened  enough 
to  bring  him  up  as  an  artist  instead  of  a  trades- 
man. William  was  born  on  28th  November, 
1757.  He  lost  no  time.  At  four  he  "saw  God 
pressing  His  forehead  against  the  window."  A 
few  years  later  he  surprised  a  swarm  of  bright 
angels  clustering  like  starlings  in  a  tree  on 
Peckham  Rye.  Again,  he  saw  angels  walking 
in  a  field  among  the  haymakers.  To  short- 
sighted parents  these  visions  would  have  sug- 
gested stern  measures:  but  Blake's  father  happily 
sent  the  dreamer  to  acquire  the  power  of  putting 
his  dreams  on  paper  at  a  drawing-school  in  the 
Strand.  More.  He  allowed  him  driblets  of 
pocket-money  with  which  "  the  little  connois- 
seur," as  collectors  and  auctioneers  fondly  called 


172     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

him,  could  occasionally  bid  for  an  engraving  or 
two  at  a  sale. 

Of  all  recorded  precocities  none,  not  even 
Mozart's,  is  more  astounding  than  Blake's.  In 
his  childish  picture-buying  he  ran  counter  to 
the  taste  of  the  day  and  discovered,  of  his  own 
motion,  the  supreme  merits  of  artists  so  different 
as  Raphael  and  Albert  Ddrer.  In  later  life  he 
wrote  :— 

I  cannot  say  that  Raphael  ever  was,  from  my 
earliest  childhood,  hidden  from  me.  I  saw  and  I 
knew  immediately  the  difference  between  Raphael 
and  Rubens. 

And  again  : — 

Rubens  thinks  tables,  chairs,  and  stools  are  grand ; 
But  Raphael  thinks  a  head,  a  foot,  a  hand. 

Nor  was  his  precocity  confined  to  one  art.  At 
the  age  of  twelve  he  had  already  composed  these 
magical  verses  : — 

How  sweet  I  roamed  from  field  to  field, 

And  tasted  all  the  summer's  pride, 
Till  I  the  Prince  of  Love  beheld 

Who  in  the  sunny  beams  did  glide. 

He  shewed  me  lilies  for  my  hair, 

And  blushing  roses  for  my  brow  ; 
He  led  me  through  his  gardens  fair 

Where  all  his  golden  pleasures  grow. 


THE  LAMB. 

From  William  Blake's  "Songs  of  Innocence: 


WILLIAM  BLAKE  173 

With  sweet  May-dews  my  wings  were  wet, 

And  Phoebus  fired  my  vocal  rage  ; 
He  caught  me  in  his  silken  net, 

And  shut  me  in  his  golden  cage. 

He  loves  to  sit  and  hear  me  sing, 

Then,  laughing,  sports  and  plays  with  me, 

Then  stretches  out  my  golden  wing, 
And  mocks  my  loss  of  liberty. 

It  would  be  hard  to  say  wherein  the  lad  showed 
the  deeper  insight  —  into  engraving  or  into 
poetry.  But,  as  one  does  not  apprentice  one's 
boys  to  a  poet,  Blake's  father  had  little  hesita- 
tion in  apprenticing  him  to  an  engraver.  Ryland 
was  the  first  master  approached  :  but,  after  their 
interview,  the  pupil  exclaimed,  "  Father,  that 
man's  face  looks  as  if  he  will  live  to  be  hanged  " 
— a  prophecy  which  came  true.  In  the  long 
run,  Blake  was  bound  to  James  Basire.  Under 
Basire  the  apprentice  perfected  himself  in  a 
hard  and  dry  style  of  engraving.  But  there 
was  no  hardening  and  drying  of  his  mind. 
Basire  was  engraver  to  the  Society  of  Anti- 
quaries, and  Blake,  at  his  most  impressionable 
age,  spent  hundreds  of  hours  shut  up  in  the 
dim  and  ghostly  vastness  of  Westminster  Abbey, 
copying  the  tombs  of  mouldering  kings. 


174  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Meanwhile  the  Royal  Academy  had  come  into 
being,  and  had  begun,  as  it  meant  to  go  on,  by 
appointing  a  conventional  and  academical  keeper. 
To  this  precious  person,  Moser  by  name,  Blake 
repaired  at  the  age  of  twenty  for  a  little  supple- 
mentary instruction.  But  when  he  disclosed  his 
love  of  Raphael  and  Marc  Antonio  Moser  was 
horrified.  "  Leave  such  old,  hard,  dry,  stiff,  un- 
finished works  of  art  alone,"  he  commanded. 
"Study  these."  And  he  opened  some  "galleries" 
of  Rubens  and  Le  Brun.  The  pupil's  answer 
was  swift  and  splendid.  "  These  things  which 
you  call  finished,"  he  said,  "are  not  even  begun." 

At  twenty-five  Blake  carried  on  the  long  tra- 
dition of  the  English  poets  by  wooing  a  damsel 
who  said  him  nay.  Like  Spenser,  he  was  garru- 
lous about  his  grief,  especially  in  the  cottage  of 
one  Boucher,  a  market-gardener  at  Battersea, 
where  there  was  a  dark  and  handsome  daughter 
named  Catherine. 

"  I  pity  you  from  my  heart,"  said  Catherine, 
when  the  tale  of  the  disdainful  Clara  had  been 
told. 

"  Do  you  pity  me  ?"  the  newly-rejected  one 
asked  eagerly. 


WILLIAM  BLAKE  175 

"  Yes,  I  do  most  sincerely." 

"  Then  I  love  you  for  that,"  cried  Blake. 

"And  I  love  .  .  .  you,"  confessed  the  in- 
genuous beauty. 

At  the  wedding  poor  Catherine  could  not  sign 
her  name  and  had  to  make  her  mark.  But 
the  marriage  turned  out  more  than  well.  Over 
and  above  her  old-fashioned  wifely  devotion, 
Catherine  Blake  seems  to  have  had  an  unending 
sense  of  her  husband's  lonely  greatness.  If  he 
sprang  from  bed  to  wrestle  with  a  thought  or 
to  fix  an  inspiration  she  would  rise  also  and 
would  sit  beside  him  for  hours  quietly  holding 
his  hand.  For  the  greater  part  of  her  life  she 
endured  poverty  :  yet  the  loudest  complaint  she 
ever  made  when  her  unpractical  lord  lost  sight 
of  his  bread-winning  in  some  glittering  maze 
of  vision  was  to  set  an  empty  plate  on  the  table 
before  him.  Monuments  of  her  love  and 
patience  still  exist  in  the  copies  of  Blake's  works 
which  she  coloured  by  hand  :  and  the  fortunate 
owners  of  these  treasures  ought  to  be  doubly 
happy  in  the  fact  that  they  possess  the  relics  of 
a  saint  as  well  as  the  masterpieces  of  a  poet. 

Although  Blake  lived  seventy  strenuous  years 


1 76  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

and  is  said  to  have  composed  a  greater  bulk  of 
poetry  than  Shakespeare  and  Milton  combined, 
only  two  tiny  books  of  his  were  printed  and 
published  during  his  lifetime  in  the  ordinary 
way.  A  year  after  his  marriage  appeared 
Poetical  Sketches,  Blake's  book  of  juvenilia.  The 
printer's  bill  was  paid  by  a  generous  friend,  the 
Rev.  Henry  Mathews,  and  the  volume  met 
with  the  fate  which  awaits  nineteen  out  of  every 
twenty  volumes  of  youthful  verse.  Eight  years 
later,  in  1791,  was  printed  and  published  The 
French  Revolution.  In  Seven  Books.  Book  I :  but 
this  poem,  one  of  Blake's  feeblest  efforts,  fell 
flat,  and  Book  II  never  saw  the  daylight.  With 
these  two  small  exceptions,  no  printer  or  publisher 
deemed  it  worth  while  to  touch  Blake's  verses  till 
he  was  dead. 

After  the  sending  forth  of  Poetical  Sketches, 
Blake  began  building  up  the  little  books  of 
poems  which  entitle  him  to  be  regarded  as  the 
most  sheerly  inspired  of  all  the  English  poets  ; 
and  when  no  publisher  would  risk  a  farthing 
upon  them,  the  author  resolved  to  sell  copies 
himself  at  the  little  print-shop  where  he  earned 
his  living.  The  submissive  Catherine  was  sent 


WILLIAM  BLAKE  177 

out  with  the  couple's  last  half-crown  to  buy  the 
raw  materials  for  Blake's  new  process  of  print- 
ing. His  method  was  to  write  his  poem  (in 
reverse)  with  an  impervious  liquid  upon  a 
copper-plate,  afterwards  plunging  the  plate  in 
acid  until  the  naked  parts  of  the  copper  were 
eaten  down,  leaving  the  coated  letters  in  relief, 
like  printers'  type.  The  margins  of  the  pages 
were  adorned  with  designs  ;  and  after  the  copies 
had  been  printed  off  in  black  or  tinted  ink, 
colours  were  added  by  hand.  The  finished  pro- 
duct rudely  recalled  an  illuminated  manuscript. 
According  to  Blake,  the  spirit  of  his  dead 
brother  Robert  disclosed  to  him  this  cheap  and 
ingenious  process,  while  St.  Joseph  was  good 
enough  to  add  a  further  revelation  with  regard 
to  the  diluting  of  colours  with  glue.  Mrs. 
Blake  folded  the  printed  sheets  and  sewed  them 
into  boards.  A  single  copy  was  sold  for  about 
a  guinea,  less  or  more,  according  to  the  good- 
will of  the  patron.  In  this  manner,  Songs  of 
Innocence  (1787),  Songs  of  Experience  (1794),  The 
Book  of  Thel  (1789),  The  Marriage  of  Heaven  and 
Hell  (1790),  and  a  number  of  "Prophetical 
Books  "  were  given  to  a  narrow  circle  which  is 

M 


178     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

widening  every  year  towards  the  utmost  boun- 
daries of  the  English-speaking  world. 

The  obscure  and  confused  "Prophetical  Books" 
have  become  the  happy  hunting  grounds  of  mys- 
tical commentators  whose  confident  feet  have  so 
far  only  added  clouds  of  dust  to  Blake's  original 
darkness.  Here  and  there,  as  in  the  book  Jeru- 
salem^ one  finds  a  lucid  interval  ;  but,  in  the 
main,  the  prophet  seems  to  have  lost  touch  with 
his  hearers  so  completely  that  the  hearers  may 
reasonably  excuse  themselves  from  devoting  the 
rest  of  their  lives  to  exegesis.  It  is  in  spite  of 
his  prophecies  and  not  because  of  them  that 
Blake  stands  among  the  immortals. 

Here  is  the  bright  and  clear  tune  which  forms 
the  prelude  to  Songs  of  Innocence : — 

Piping  down  the  valleys  wild, 

Piping  songs  of  pleasant  glee, 
On  a  cloud,  I  saw  a  child, 

And  he,  laughing,  said  to  me  : 

"  Pipe  a  song  about  a  Lamb  !  " 

So  I  piped  with  merry  cheer. 
"  Piper,  pipe  that  song  again  !  " 

So  I  piped  :  he  wept  to  hear. 

Blake  piped  many  "  a  song  about  a  Lamb  "  ; 
and  his  lamb  was  the  Lamb  of  God.  His  poem 


WILLIAM  BLAKE  179 

of  the  lion  and  the  lamb,  called  Night,  is  one 
of  the  most  strangely  beautiful  poems  in  any 
language.  Again,  the  famous  Tiger,  Tiger,  which 
seems  at  first  to  be  merely  a  fiercely  coloured, 
decorative  picture  of  the  great  striped  cat  stealing 
through  the  jungle,  proves  to  be  the  crying-out 
of  a  soul  before  the  mystery  of  Good  and  Evil. 
In  Blake's  second  version  two  of  its  verses  run : — 

Tiger,  Tiger,  burning  bright 
In  the  forests  of  the  night, 
What  immortal  hand  or  eye 
Framed  thy  fearful  symmetry  ? 

When  the  stars  threw  down  their  spears, 
And  watered  heaven  with  their  tears, 
Did  he  smile  his  work  to  see  ? 
Did  he  who  made  the  lamb  make  thee  ? 

Indeed,  it  is  the  grandeur  of  Blake  that  he 
can  make  a  few  child-like  words  hold  infinite 
and  eternal  meanings,  even  as  a  tiny  dew-drop 
can  reflect  the  whole  orb  of  the  sun.  All — and 
much  more  than  all — that  Tennyson  said  in  his 
oft-quoted  "  Flower  in  the  crannied  wall,"  Blake 
had  said  already  in  the  four  lines  : — 

To  see  a  world  in  a  grain  of  sand, 

A  heaven  in  a  wild  flower, 
Hold  Infinity  in  the  palm  of  your  hand, 

And  Eternity  in  an  hour. 


i8o  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

In  another  place  he  says,  "  One  thought  fills 
immensity "  ;  and  Eternity  is  ever  present  to 
his  mind.  Here,  for  example,  is  part  of  a  letter 
which  he  wrote  in  middle  life  to  the  sculptor 
Flaxman  : — 

I  am  more  famed  in  heaven  for  my  works  than  I 
could  well  conceive.  In  my  brain  are  studies  and 
chambers  filled  with  books  and  pictures  of  old,  which 
I  wrote  and  painted  in  ages  of  eternity  before  my 
mortal  lifej  and  these  works  are  the  delight  and  study 
of  archangels.  Why  then  should  I  be  anxious  about 
the  riches  or  fame  of  mortality  ? 

Of  his  Jerusalem  he  said  : — 

It  is  the  grandest  poem  the  world  contains.  I 
can  praise  it  because  I  am  only  a  secretary.  The 
authors  are  in  eternity. 

On  some  ears  all  this  will  grate  as  the  almost 
blasphemous  boasting  of  a  madman.  But  Blake 
was  speaking  to  a  kindred  soul  and  not  to 
strangers  and  literalists.  In  a  literal  sense  he 
no  more  meant  that  archangels  were  poring  over 
his  works  than  he  meant  to  assert  the  existence 
of  heavenly  book-binderies  when  he  blithely  said 
of  some  poems  which  the  publishers  had  rejected, 
"  Never  mind  1  They  are  published  elsewhere, 
and  beautifully  bound."  Those  who  shake  their 


THE  REUNION  OF  SOUL  AND  BODY. 

A  Design  by  William  Blake  for  Blairs  '•  Grave." 


WILLIAM  BLAKE  181 

heads  and  drop  hints  of  Bedlam  should  take 
note  of  the  cool  and  sane  answer  which  Blake 
gave  to  some  one  who  had  taken  his  visions 
too  literally.  "  You  can  see  what  I  do  if  you 
choose,"  he  said.  "  Work  up  imagination  to 
the  state  of  vision  and  the  thing  is  done." 

Most  of  his  unworldly  works  were  wrought  in 
the  midst  of  bricks  and  mortar,  in  bare  rooms, 
and  under  pinching  poverty.  But  for  three 
years  Blake,  in  his  forties,  was  enabled  to  live 
under  "  a  thatched  roof  of  rusted  gold  "  between 
the  fields  and  the  sea.  Hayley,  the  poor-headed, 
good-hearted  literary  squire  who  was  trying  to 
double  the  parts  of  Maecenas  and  Horace,  asked 
Blake  to  engrave  the  plates  for  his  Life  of  Cowper, 
and  very  handsomely  established  the  poet  in  a 
cottage  near  his  own  mansion  at  Felpham,  close 
to  Bognor.  Both  cottage  and  mansion  still 
stand,  and  would  be  visited  by  thousands  of 
Bognor  day-trippers  if  it  were  not  for  the 
superior  attractions  of  a  beer-house  entirely 
papered  with  penny  stamps. 

In  due  time,  or  much  sooner,  Hayley  got 
upon  Blake's  nerves.  It  does  not  follow  that 
the  little  man  was  necessarily  wrong  and  the 


i82     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

great  one  necessarily  right ;  but  in  three  years 
the  ill-matched  pair  parted  company.  Blake 
returned  to  London  and  worked  like  a  slave 
until,  on  I2th  August,  1827,  he  who  "could 
not  think  of  death  as  more  than  the  going  out  of 
one  room  into  another  "  declared  himself  "  happy, 
hoping  for  salvation  through  Jesus  Christ,"  and 
died  saying  that  he  "  was  going  to  that  country 
which  he  had  all  his  life  wished  to  see." 

An  enormous  mass  of  Blake's  unpublished 
drawings  and  MSS.  fell  into  the  hands  of  some 
Swedenborgians  and  Irvingites  who  made  a 
bonfire  of  them  all,  on  the  ground  that,  although 
they  were  undeniably  inspired,  their  inspiration 
was  from  the  devil.  Probably,  however,  the 
loss  to  the  world,  so  far  as  the  MSS.  are  con- 
cerned, was  not  great,  as  the  writings  appear 
to  have  belonged  to  Blake's  "  prophetic  "  period. 
Of  his  Jerusalem  he  had  said  : — 

I  give  you  the  end  of  a  golden  string, 

Only  wind  it  into  a  ball, 
It  will  lead  you  in  at  Heaven's  gate 

Built  in  Jerusalem's  wall. 

Most  of  the  golden  strings,  however,  are  tangled 
and  knotted  beyond  unravelling  ;  and  therefore 


WILLIAM  BLAKE  183 

one  may  comfort  one's  heart  for  the  lost  MSS. 
by  recalling  this  passage  from   The  Marriage  of 
Heaven  and  Hell: — 

The  prophets  Isaiah  and  Ezekiel  dined  with  me. 

After  dinner,  I  asked  Isaiah  to  favour  the  world 
with  his  lost  works.  He  said  none  of  equal  value 
was  lost.  Ezekiel  said  the  same  of  his. 

Further  consolation  lies  in  the  fact  that  the 
prophetic  books,  so  far  as  they  are  intelligible, 
contain  sundry  social  doctrines  which  experience 
has  shown  to  be  poisonous.  Blake  preached 
these  doctrines  without  practising  them  :  but 
they  are  in  danger  of  befogging  his  fame  by 
drawing  the  wrong  worshippers  to  his  shrine. 
But  in  justice  to  Blake  it  must  be  remembered 
that  he  thought  and  wrote  under  the  over-strong 
stimulus  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  that, 
while  others  talked,  he  was  the  only  English 
intellectuel  who  actually  walked  the  streets  in 
the  bonnet  rouge.  Much  of  his  social  iconoclasm 
may  therefore  have  been  accidental.  As  for 
his  alleged  theological  novelties,  like  most  lay 
dabblings  in  the  first  of  sciences  they  turn 
out,  on  scrutiny,  to  be  either  revivals  of  out- 
worn heresies  or  paradoxical  statements  of  what 


1 84  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

the    most   thoughtful    Churchmen    have   always 
believed. 

Blake's  achievement  as  a  painter-graver  lies 
outside  the  scope  of  this  book.  But,  without 
going  into  details,  it  must  be  added  that  his 
best  designs  are  worthy  to  stand  beside  his  best 
poems.  From  an  every-day  standpoint,  he  was 
ludicrously  wrong  in  claiming  to  have  painted 
as  well  as  Raphael.  Nevertheless  there  are  con- 
noisseurs who,  rising  above  conventional  art- 
criticism  and  the  logic  of  the  auction-room, 
would  gladly  give  a  minor  Raphael  or  two  for 
a  picture  so  unexpected,  so  poetical,  so  tender, 
and  so  glorious  as  The  Nativity  of  Blake.  Yet 
hundreds  of  Blake's  drawings  are  still  lying 
unpublished,  and  the  directors  of  the  British 
national  collections  cheerfully  give  for  an  altar- 
piece  by  some  second-rate  Italian  a  sum  which 
would  buy  two  or  three  works  from  the  hand 
of  the  most  directly  inspired  artist  England  has 
ever  produced. 


ROBERT  BURNS 

/CRITICISM  of  Robert  Burns  is  beset  by  a 
difficulty.  Fully  to  appreciate  Burns  one 
must  be  a  Scot  of  Scots  :  but  to  be  a  Scot  of 
Scots  involves,  so  far  as  Burns  is  concerned, 
that  one  must  cease  to  be  a  critic.  The  cold 
Englishman  may  try  to  take  Burns  to  pieces, 
like  an  old  watch,  so  as  to  find  out  how  the 
wheels  were  made  to  go  round  :  but  a  Scot  of 
Scots  would  as  soon  consent  to  follow  the  Eng- 
lishman's example  as  to  preside  at  the  vivisec- 
tion of  his  own  favourite  dog. 

The  poems  of  Burns  form,  so  to  speak,  the 
vast  and  varied  national  anthem  of  the  Scottish 
race  all  over  the  world  ;  and,  much  as  they  may 
enjoy  them,  English  readers  rarely  lose  the  feel- 
ing that  they  are  intruders  upon  a  family  circle. 
Again,  the  strangeness  of  Burns'  vernacular  to 
the  English  ear  and  the  English  eye  increases 
the  English  critic's  diffidence.  Nor  is  there 

185 


i86  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

much  clear  light  to  be  gained  from  the  verdicts 
of  English  poets  upon  their  Scottish  brother. 
Here  is  a  reminiscence  of  Aubrey  de  Vere  : — 

"'Read  the  exquisite  songs  of  Burns,'  Tennyson 
exclaimed.  '  In  shape,  each  of  them  has  the  perfection 
of  the  berry,  in  light,  the  radiance  of  the  dewdrop  : 
you  forget  for  its  sake  those  stupid  things,  his  serious 
pieces ! '  The  same  day  I  met  Wordsworth,  and 
named  Burns  to  him.  Wordsworth  praised  him  even 
more  vehemently  than  Tennyson  had  done,  as  the 
great  genius  who  had  brought  Poetry  back  to  Nature; 
but  ended,  '  Of  course  I  refer  to  his  serious  efforts, 
such  as  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night;  those  foolish  little 
amatory  songs  of  his  one  has  to  forget.'  I  told  the 
tale  to  Henry  Taylor  that  evening ;  and  his  answer 
was, '  Burns'  exquisite  songs  and  Burns'  serious  efforts 
are  to  me  alike  tedious,  and  disagreeable  reading.' " 

Robert  Burns  took  his  first  breath  of  Scot- 
land's cauld  blasts  at  Alloway,  near  Ayr,  25th 
January,  1759,  eleven  years  before  William 
Wordsworth,  another  outdoor  poet  of  a  differ- 
ent order,  was  ushered  into  an  English  home. 
He  was  the  eldest  son  of  William  Burns  or 
Burnes,  a  struggling  farmer  ;  and  it  was  in  the 
wake  of  the  plough  that  this  bird  of  the  stubble 
and  the  grass  carolled  afterwards  its  sweetest 
lays. 


ROBERT  BURNS  187 

His  early  years,  though  nipped  by  privation, 
were  not  unhappy.  His  father  waged  a  con- 
tinual battle  with  ill-fortune,  but  in  the  thick 
of  the  fight  manifested  all  the  Scottish  peasant's 
carefulness  for  the  education  of  his  children. 
In  1766  he  removed  to  the  farm  of  Mount 
Oliphant,  a  few  miles  above  the  mouth  of  the 
River  Doon.  Robert  and  his  brother  Gilbert 
were  placed  under  the  tuition  of  a  Mr.  Murdoch. 
This  young  man  boarded  with  the  family,  and 
for  a  small  remuneration  undertook  to  teach  the 
sons  of  his  host  together  with  those  of  a  few 
other  farmers  in  the  neighbourhood.  Gilbert 
says  : — 

With  Murdoch  we  learned  to  read  English  tolerably 
well,  and  to  write  a  little.  He  taught  us,  too,  the 
English  grammar.  I  was  too  young  to  profit  much 
by  his  lessons  in  grammar,  but  Robert  made  some 
proficiency  in  it,  a  circumstance  of  considerable 
weight  in  the  unfolding  of  his  genius  and  character ; 
as  he  soon  became  remarkable  for  the  fluency  and 
correctness  of  his  expression,  and  read  the  few  books 
that  came  in  his  way  with  much  pleasure  and  im- 
provement, for  even  then  he  was  a  reader  when  he 
could  get  a  book. 

"  The  fluency  and  correctness  of  his  expres- 
sion "  was  one  of  the  marvels  of  Burns  ;  but 


i88  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

the  gift  was  closer  akin  to  nature  than  to  lessons 
in  English  grammar.  Dugald  Stewart  testifies 
that  "  the  idea  which  his  conversation  conveyed 
of  the  powers  of  his  mind  exceeded,  if  possible, 
that  which  is  suggested  by  his  writings "  ; 
Robertson,  the  historian,  said,  he  "  scarcely  ever 
met  any  man  whose  conversation  displayed 
greater  vigour "  ;  the  Duchess  of  Gordon  de- 
clared that  "  he  carried  her  off  her  feet "  ;  and 
it  is  affirmed  that  when  he  came  late  to  an  inn 
the  servants  would  get  out  of  bed  to  hear  him 
talk.  Burns  has  left  us  a  vivid  picture  of  the 
hardships  of  his  youth  : — 

The  farm  proved  a  ruinous  bargain ;  and  to  clench 
the  misfortune,  we  fell  into  the  hands  of  a  factor, 
who  sat  for  the  picture  I  have  drawn  of  one  in  my 
tale  of  "  Twa  Dogs."  My  father  was  advanced  in 
life  when  he  married ;  I  was  the  eldest  of  seven 
children,  and  he,  worn  out  by  early  hardships,  was 
unfit  for  labour.  My  father's  spirit  was  soon  irritated, 
but  not  easily  broken.  There  was  freedom  in  his 
lease  in  two  years  more,  and  to  weather  these  two 
years,  we  retrenched  our  expenses.  We  lived  very 
poorly  :  I  was  a  dexterous  ploughman  for  my  age ; 
and  the  next  eldest  to  me  was  a  brother  who  could 
drive  the  plough  very  well,  and  help  me  to  thrash  the 
corn.  A  novel-writer  might,  perhaps,  have  viewed 


ROBERT  BURNS  189 

these  scenes  with  some  satisfaction,  but  so  did  not  I ; 
my  indignation  yet  boils  at  the  recollection  of  the 
scoundrel  factor's  insolent  threatening  letters,  which 
used  to  set  us  all  in  tears. 

What  the  books  were  which  aided  in  the 
development  of  the  poet's  mind,  then,  and  after- 
wards at  Lochlea,  to  which  farm  on  the  banks 
of  the  Ayr  the  family  removed  when  he  was  in 
his  seventeenth  year,  he  himself  has  told  us. 

What  I  knew  of  ancient  story  was  gathered  from 
Salmon's  and  Guthrie's  geographical  grammars ;  and 
the  ideas  I  had  formed  of  modern  manners,  of  litera- 
ture, and  criticism,  I  got  from  the  Spectator.  These, 
with  Pope's  Works,  some  plays  of  Shakespeare,  Full 
and  Dickson  on  Agriculture,  the  Pantheon,  Locke's 
Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding,  Stackhouse's  History 
of  the  Bible,  Justice's  British  Gardener's  Directory,  Bayle's 
Lectures,  Allan  Ramsay's  Works,  Taylor's  Scripture 
Doctrine  of  Original  Sin,  A  Select  Collection  of  English 
Songs,  and  Hervey's  Meditatiorts,  had  formed  the  whole 
of  my  reading.  The  collection  of  songs  was  my 
•oade  mecum.  I  pored  over  them  driving  my  cart,  or 
walking  to  labour,  song  by  song,  verse  by  verse  ; 
carefully  noting  the  true,  tender,  or  sublime,  from 
affectation  and  fustian.  I  am  convinced  I  owe  to  this 
practice  much  of  my  critic  craft,  such  as  it  is.  ... 
The  first  two  books  I  ever  read  in  private,  and  which 
gave  me  more  pleasure  than  any  two  books  I  ever 


igo  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

read  since,  were  The  Life  of  Hannibal  and  The  History 
of  Sir  William  Wallace.  Hannibal  gave  my  young 
ideas  such  a  turn  that  I  used  to  strut  in  raptures  up 
and  down  after  the  recruiting  drum  and  bag-pipe,  and 
wish  myself  tall  enough  to  be  a  soldier ;  while  the 
story  of  Wallace  poured  a  Scottish  prejudice  into  my 
veins,  which  will  boil  along  there  till  the  flood-gates 
of  life  shut  in  eternal  rest. 

For  the  quickening  of  his  imagination  and  the 
cultivation  within  him  of  "  the  latent  seeds  of 
poetry,"  Burns  reckoned  that  he  owed  much  to 
the  influence  of  an  old  woman  who  lived  with  the 
family,  and  who  "had  the  largest  collection  in 
the  country  of  tales  and  songs  concerning  devils, 
ghosts,  fairies,  brownies,  witches,  warlocks,  spun- 
kies,  kelpies,  elf-candles,  dead-lights,  wraiths, 
apparitions,  cantraips,  giants,  enchanted  towers, 
dragons,  and  other  trumpery." 

Love-making  and  verse -writing,  the  chief 
recreations  of  his  toilsome  days,  had  for  him 
a  simultaneous  birth,  and  he  tells  us  how.  In 
his  fifteenth  autumn  he  had  for  partner  in  the 
harvest  field  "  a  bewitching  creature "  a  year 
younger  than  himself.  He  says  : — 

I  never  expressly  said  I  loved  her.     Indeed  I  did 
not  know  myself  why  I  liked  so  much  to  loiter  behind 


ROBERT  BURNS  191 

with  her,  when  returning  in  the  evening  from  our 
labours ;  why  the  tones  of  her  voice  made  my  heart- 
strings thrill  like  an  ^Eolian  harp ;  and  particularly 
why  my  pulse  beat  such  a  furious  ratan  when  I  looked 
and  fingered  over  her  little  hand  to  pick  out  the  cruel 
nettle-stings  and  thistles.  Among  her  other  love- 
inspiring  qualities,  she  sung  sweetly ;  and  it  was  her 
favourite  reel  to  which  I  attempted  giving  an  em- 
bodied vehicle  in  rhyme.  I  was  not  so  presumptuous 
as  to  imagine  that  I  could  make  verses  like  printed 
ones,  composed  by  men  who  had  Greek  and  Latin ; 
but  my  girl  sung  a  song  which  was  said  to  be  com- 
posed by  a  small  country  laird's  son,  on  one  of  his 
father's  maids,  with  whom  he  was  in  love ;  and  I  saw 
no  reason  why  I  might  not  rhyme  as  well  as  he ;  for, 
excepting  that  he  could  smear  sheep  and  cast  peats,  his 
father  living  in  the  moorlands,  he  had  no  more  scholar- 
craft  than  myself.  Thus  with  me  began  love  and  poetry. 

An  unfortunate  change  in  the  life  of  Burns 
was  his  migration  to  Irvine  when  he  was  about 
twenty-two  years  of  age,  to  learn  flax-dressing. 
Not  only  did  the  venture  prove  disastrous 
financially,  but  he  was  thrown  into  company 
and  formed  friendships  such  as  lowered  his 
moral  tone  ever  afterwards.  Soon  after  his 
return  the  father  died,  his  last  hours  perturbed 
by  fears  for  the  future  of  his  son,  of  whom  he 
had  remarked  prophetically  years  before,  "  Who- 


192     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

ever  lives  to  see  it,  something  extraordinary  will 
come  from  that  boy." 

Robert  and  his  brother  Gilbert  now  struggled 
to  make  a  success  of  the  farm  they  had  rented 
at  Mossgiel  before  their  father's  decease  ;  but 
bad  seed  in  the  first  and  a  late  harvest  in  the 
second  year  baulked  their  endeavours.  Poetry 
prospered  more  than  farming.  Some  of  the 
best  work  of  Burns  was  produced  at  this  period. 
The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night,  Halloween,  The  Jolly 
Beggars,  Holy  Willie's  Prayer,  To  a  Mouse,  and  a 
number  of  other  remarkable  pieces  were  poured 
forth  in  rapid  succession.  The  poet  was  now 
about  twenty-five,  and  the  desire  to  win  literary 
renown  for  himself  and  his  country  glowed  in 
his  soul  as  his  large  dark  eyes  glowed  in  his 
face.  "  I  never  saw  such  another  eye  in  a 
human  head,  though  I  have  seen  the  most  dis- 
tinguished men  of  my  time,"  said  Sir  Walter 
Scott.  "  I  had,"  wrote  Burns  afterwards, 

E'en  then,  a  wish,  I  mind  its  power, 
A  wish  that  to  my  latest  hour 

Shall  strongly  heave  my  breast, 
That  I  for  poor  Auld  Scotland's  sake 
Some  usefu'  plan  or  beuk  could  make, 

Or  sing  a  sang  at  least. 


ROBERT  BURNS  193 

It  was  in  the  singing  of  songs  that  his  gifts 
were  to  find  most  voluminous  expression.  He 
wrote  some  three  hundred,  and  of  these  quite 
two- thirds  are  concerned  with  love-making.  His 
Jeanies  and  Marys  and  Eppies,  his  Megs  and 
Peggies  and  Nannies,  keep  the  poet  in  a  con- 
stant fever.  He  flits  from  one  to  another  as 
vagrantly  as  a  bee,  sipping  honey  at  every  turn, 
and  paying  for  the  nectar  with  a  song.  "  My 
heart,"  he  writes,  "was  completely  tinder,  and 
was  eternally  lighted  up  by  some  goddess  or 
other."  After  making  the  fullest  allowance  for 
his  inflammable  nature,  the  fickleness  and 
shallowness  of  his  affections  must  remain  un- 
admirable.  But  none  can  blame  him  more  than 
he  blamed  himself.  It  is  pitiable  to  remember 
how  much  of  his  life  was  made  up  of  sinning 
and  repenting ;  yet  one  must  not  forget  his 
words  to  the  Unco  Guid  or  the  Rigidly  Righteous: — 

Who  made  the  heart,  'tis  He  alone 

Decidedly  can  try  us, 
He  knows  each  chord  its  various  tone, 

Each  spring  its  various  bias  : 
Then  at  the  balance  let's  be  mute, 

We  never  can  adjust  it ; 
What's  done  we  partly  may  compute, 

But  know  not  what's  resisted, 

N 


i94  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

It  was  out  of  this  sinning  and  repenting  that 
his  melodies  sprang,  melodies  which  have  cap- 
tured the  hearts  of  multitudes,  and  it  is  irrational 
to  grow  enthusiastic  over  their  scent  and  colour 
and  yet  decry  ungenerously  the  soil  in  which 
they  grew.  It  is  just  to  remember  also  that 
while  Burns  seized  and  refashioned  the  old 
songs  of  his  country,  he  purified  and  exalted 
them  in  the  process.  Tennyson  once  remarked 
to  Lecky  that  "  Burns  did  for  the  old  songs  of 
Scotland  almost  what  Shakespeare  had  done  for 
the  English  drama  that  preceded  him." 

In  1786  Burns  made  arrangements  to  leave 
Scotland  for  Jamaica,  where  a  situation  had  been 
promised  him.  The  farm  was  unremunerative, 
his  relations  with  Jean  Armour,  whom  he  sub- 
sequently married,  were  fruitful  of  shame  and 
grief  to  both  himself  and  her,  and  emigration 
seemed  the  likeliest  way  out  of  many  diffi- 
culties. To  raise  funds  his  poems  were  pub- 
lished at  Kilmarnock  ;  but  the  publication 
brought  him  so  much  more  than  the  sorely- 
needed  money,  such  a  waft  of  fame  and 
popularity,  that,  instead  of  becoming  an  exile 
from  his  country,  we  find  him  spending  the 


ROBERT  BURNS  195 

winter   in    Edinburgh,   courted    by    wealth    and 
fashion  and  learning. 

It  seemed  certain  that  this  was  the  lucky  hour 
of  the  poet's  career,  the  dawn  of  a  sunnier  day. 
But  it  was  only  a  gleam  that  darkened  into 
night.  Burns  was  made  the  pet  and  wonder 
of  an  Edinburgh  season  ;  a  second  edition  of 
his  poems  was  subscribed  for  ;  dinners  and 
suppers  were  heaped  upon  him  ;  and  then, 
with  an  indifference  hard  to  understand  and 
harder  to  excuse,  he  was  left  to  face  the 
stern  fight  of  the  future  with  scarcely  a  helping 
hand. 

The  farm  at  Ellisland  on  the  banks  of  the 
Nith,  leased  and  stocked  out  of  the  proceeds  of 
his  poems  after  Burns  had  generously  given 
;£i8o  to  his  brother  Gilbert,  proved  a  failure; 
and  as  his  resources  diminished  both  his  family 
and  his  cares  increased.  A  post  in  the  Excise 
was  found  for  him  ;  but  the  toil  it  added  to  his 
already  incessant  labour  was  a  heavy  tax  to  pay 
for  its  additional  ^50  a  year.  After  a  struggle 
of  three  years  at  Ellisland,  he  was  compelled  to 
surrender  the  lease,  dispose  of  his  stock,  and 
retire  with  his  wife  and  children  to  a  small  house 


196     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

in  Dumfries,  a  change  unfavourable  to  both  his 
morals  and  his  fortunes. 

Tarn  (yShanter^  the  most  vigorous  offspring  of 
his  muse,  had  been  produced  at  Ellisland  in  the 
autumn  of  1790.  His  wife  found  him  one  day 
reciting  aloud,  and  with  wild  gesticulations  : — 

Now  Tarn  !  O  Tarn  !  had  they  been  queans, 
A'  plump  and  strappin'  in  their  teens. 

"  I  wish  ye  had  seen  him,"  she  said ;  "  he  was  in 
such  ecstasy  that  the  tears  were  happing  down 
his  cheeks." 

After  his  removal  to  Dumfries  he  continued 
to  pour  out  songs  for  a  collection  of  national 
melodies  then  in  course  of  formation  by  Mr. 
George  Thomson,  of  Edinburgh.  For  these, 
with  a  generosity  that  does  credit  to  his  heart, 
but  that  hardly  seems  called  for  in  such  straitened 
circumstances,  he  declined  all  pay.  "As  to  re- 
muneration," he  wrote,  "  you  may  think  my 
songs  either  above  or  below  price ;  for  they  shall 
be  absolutely  the  one  or  the  other." 

Among  the  poetical  qualities  of  Burns  none 
is  more  noteworthy  than  his  spontaneity.  His 
verse  came  as  directly,  inevitably,  as  the  song  of  a 


ROBERT  BURNS  197 

bird ;  never  far-fetched,  but  always  of  that  which 
met  his  eye  and  filled  his  heart.  Even  his  longer 
poems  were  born  in  a  breath,  not  hewn  and 
chiselled  into  shape.  And  like  his  songs  was 
his  life  :  swift,  vivid,  wayward  ;  and  when  with 
broken  wing  he  fluttered  to  the  ground  on 
2ist  July,  1796,  his  death  was  of  a  piece  with 
his  work  and  with  his  life. 

Burns  is  the  poet  of  the  fields.  His  songs 
carry  us  into  the  open-air,  to  saunter  through 
the  barley,  to  flirt  with  some  pretty  reaper  amid 
the  corn,  to  make  friends  with  the  mouse  or  the 
daisy.  The  scent  of  the  hay  is  on  his  garments, 
the  cry  of  living  things  in  his  speech.  He  is 
Scotland's  lark,  and  were  her  grey  skies  cheated 
of  his  silvery  notes,  they  would  be  robbed  in- 
deed. Her  Walter  Scott  could  declaim  of  castles 
and  of  knights,  of  stately  dames  and  prowess  on 
the  tilted  field  ;  but  it  was  Burns  who  sang  of 
the  common  folk,  their  homely  accents,  their 
fireside  ways,  their  loves,  their  laughter,  their 
tears — and  these  are  the  things  that  matter. 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH 

TN  our  rationalistic  age,  it  is  thought  old- 
fashioned  and  fanciful  to  speak  of  a  poet 
as  "  inspired."  Yet,  if  the  word  did  not  already 
exist,  it  would  have  to  be  invented.  Some  word 
or  other  is  necessary  by  which  to  express  the 
sudden  up-soaring  of  a  plodding  minstrel  from 
the  flat  and  dusty  earth  into  the  larks'  heaven. 
And  the  word  "  inspired  "  is  not  the  worst  that 
could  have  been  chosen.  When  the  voice  of 
a  deadly-dull  drone  suddenly  rings  out  like  a 
golden  trumpet,  one  cannot  help  feeling  that 
some  bright  power  is  possessing  him  and  speak- 
ing through  him.  Wordsworth's  is  the  great 
case  in  point.  The  difference  between  Words- 
worth inspired  and  Wordsworth  uninspired  is 
greater  than  the  famous  difference  between  Philip 
drunk  and  Philip  sober. 

Wordsworth    was    born    at    Cockermouth    in 
198 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH  199 

Cumberland  on  yth  April,  1770,  just  outside 
that  Lake  Country  which  his  poetry  was  destined 
to  colour  so  brightly  on  the  poetical  map  of  the 
world.  His  father,  John  Wordsworth,  was  a 
lawyer,  his  mother  the  daughter  of  a  mercer  at 
Penrith.  He  describes  himself  as 

Of  a  stiff,  moody,  violent  temper;  so  much  so  that 
I  remember  going  once  into  the  attics  of  my  grand- 
father's house  at  Penrith,  upon  some  indignity  having 
been  put  upon  me,  with  an  intention  of  destroying 
myself  with  one  of  the  foils,  which  I  knew  were  kept 
there.  I  took  the  foil  in  my  hand,  but  my  heart 
failed.  Upon  another  occasion  when  I  was  at  my 
grandfather's  house  at  Penrith,  along  with  my  eldest 
brother,  Richard,  we  were  whipping  tops  together 
in  the  large  drawing-room,  on  which  the  carpet  was 
only  laid  down  on  particular  occasions.  The  walls 
were  hung  round  with  family  pictures,  and  I  said  to 
my  brother,  "  Dare  you  strike  your  whip  through 
that  old  lady's  petticoat  ? "  He  replied,  "  No,  I 
won't."  "  Then,"  said  I,  "  here  goes  !  "  and  I  struck 
my  lash  through  her  hooped  petticoat ;  for  which, 
no  doubt,  though  I  have  forgotten  it,  I  was  properly 
punished. 

Of  this  rebellious,  mischievous  spirit,  there  is 
not  much  trace  in  Wordsworth's  adult  life.  He 
himself  taught  that  "  The  Child  is  father  of  the 


200  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Man  "  ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  connect  the  repose- 
ful poet  of  The  Prelude  with  the  boy  who  struck 
his  whipcord  through  the  pictures  on  the  draw- 
ing-room wall.  He  describes  his  school  days  at 
Hawkshead  as  very  happy,  chiefly  because  he 
was  left  at  liberty  to  read  whatever  he  pleased. 
"  I  read,"  he  says,  "  all  Fielding's  works,  Don 
Quixofe,  Gil  BIast  and  any  part  of  Swift  that  I 
liked — Gullivers  Travels  and  The  Tale  of  a  Tub 
being  both  much  to  my  taste." 

It  was  from  Nature,  however,  rather  than 
from  books  that  Wordsworth  drew  his  deepest 
inspiration  ;  and  he  has  left  us  this  record  of 
his  sensitiveness  to  the  Presence  which  filled  the 
vales  and  brooded  over  the  hills  : — 

Ere  I  had  told 

Ten  birthdays,  when  among  the  mountain  slopes 
Frost,  and  the  breath  of  frosty  wind,  had  snapped 
The  last  autumnal  crocus,  'twas  my  joy 
With  store  of  springes  o'er  my  shoulder  hung 
To  range  the  open  heights  where  woodcocks  run 
Along  the  smooth  green  turf.    Through  half  the  night, 
Scudding  away  from  snare  to  snare,  I  plied 
That  anxious  visitation  ; — moon  and  stars 
Were  shining  o'er  my  head.     I  was  alone, 
And  seemed  to  be  a  trouble  to  the  peace 
That  dwelt  among  them.     Sometimes  it  befell 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH  201 

In  these  night  wanderings,  that  a  strong  desire 
O'erpowered  my  better  reason,  and  the  bird 
Which  was  the  captive  of  another's  toil 
Became  my  prey ;  and  when  the  deed  was  done 
I  heard  among  the  solitary  hills 
Low  breathings  coming  after  me,  and  sounds 
Of  undistinguishable  motion,  steps 
Almost  as  silent  as  the  turf  they  trod. 

He  was  wont  as  a  boy  to  blow 

Mimic  hootings  to  the  silent  owls 
That  they  might  answer  him  ; 

and  then,  sometimes  in  the  silence, 

While  he  hung 

Listening,  a  gentle  shock  of  mild  surprise 
Has  carried  far  into  his  heart  the  voice 
Of  mountain  torrents  ;  or  the  visible  scene 
Would  enter  unawares  into  his  mind 
With  all  its  solemn  imagery,  its  rocks, 
Its  woods,  and  that  uncertain  heaven  received 
Into  the  bosom  of  the  steady  lake. 

The  passion  for  ravaging  the  woods  in  quest 
of  nuts  is  common  to  all  youths  who  know 
where  there  is  a  nut-tree  to  be  found ;  but 
seldom  shall  we  find  a  boy  who,  among  the 
broken  branches,  feels  that  Nature  has  been 
hurt  like  a  living  thing. 


202     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Then  up  I  rose 

And  dragged  to  earth  both  branch  and  bough  with  crash 
And  merciless  ravage;  and  the  shady  nook 
Of  hazels,  and  the  green  and  mossy  bower, 
Deformed  and  sullied,  patiently  gave  up 
Their  quiet  being,  and,  unless  I  now 
Confound  my  present  feelings  with  the  past, 
Ere  from  the  mutilated  bower  I  turned, 
Exulting,  rich  beyond  the  wealth  of  kings, 
I  felt  a  sense  of  pain  when  I  beheld 
The  silent  trees,  and  saw  the  intruding  sky — 
Then,  dearest  Maiden,  move  along  these  shades 
In  gentleness  of  heart ;  with  gentle  hand 
Touch — for  there  is  a  spirit  in  the  woods. 

Through  the  liberality  of  two  uncles  Words- 
worth was  sent  to  Cambridge  in  1787  when  he 
was  seventeen  years  of  age.  He  quitted  it  with 
his  bachelor's  degree  in  1791.  From  his  descrip- 
tion of  the  life  there  one  does  not  gather  that  it 
did  over-much  for  him. 

We  sauntered,  played,  or  rioted ;  we  talked 
Unprofitable  talk  at  morning  hours  ; 
Drifted  about  along  the  streets  and  walks, 
Read  lazily  in  trivial  books,  went  forth 
To  gallop  through  the  country  in  blind  zeal 
Of  senseless  horsemanship,  or  on  the  breast 
Of  Cam  sailed  boisterously,  and  let  the  stars 
Come  forth,  perhaps  without  one  quiet  thought. 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH  203 

Imagination  slept, 

And  yet  not  utterly.     I  could  not  print 
Ground  where  the  grass  had  yielded  to  the  steps 
Of  generations  of  illustrious  men, 
Unmoved.     I  could  not  always  lightly  pass 
Through  the  same  gateways,  sleep  where  they  had  slept, 
Wake  where  they  had  waked,  range  that  inclosure  old, 
That  garden  of  great  intellects,  undisturbed. 

After  Cambridge  Wordsworth  spent  some 
months  in  London,  and  thence  crossed  over  to 
France.  The  Revolution  was  at  its  height,  and 
the  young  Englishman  was  not  alone  in  believ- 
ing that  the  Golden  Age  was  at  hand.  To 
generous  minds  it  was  bliss  merely  to  be  alive 
in  a  time  so  magnificent  with  hope  :  while,  in 
Wordsworth's  own  words,  "  to  be  young  was 
heaven."  The  poet  spent  most  of  the  year 
1792  at  Orleans  and  Blois,  returning  to  Paris 
after  the  massacres  of  September.  It  is  cus- 
tomary to  describe  Wordsworth's  life  as  a  life 
entirely  without  excitement,  and  to  hint  that 
•Wordsworth  himself  was  always  a  slow-coach : 
but  he  had  more  than  "  one  crowded  hour  of 
glorious  life,"  and,  if  his  uncles  had  not  cut  off 
supplies,  he  would  have  taken  an  active  part  in 
French  politics.  His  noble  sonnets  on  Liberty 


204  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

are  full  of  the  fiery  joy  and  pride  with  which  he 
hailed  the  day  when  all  men  should  be  fraternal 
and  equal  and  free. 

But  the  cold  steel  fell  upon  the  neck  of 
Louis  XVI,  and  Wordsworth  recoiled  in  dismay 
from  the  new  Terror  which  outdid  the  far  milder 
and  less  bloody  tyranny  which  had  been  swept 
away.  And  when  Liberty  made  way  for  a 
military  despotism,  he  turned,  sick  at  heart,  to 
Nature  for  the  solace  and  inspiration  which  he 
had  hoped  to  find  in  the  progress  of  the  race. 
Nor  was  he  ever  thereafter  unfaithful  to  his 
choice. 

At  home  again  in  England,  Wordsworth  pub- 
lished two  little  books,  or  pamphlets,  of  undis- 
tinguished verse,  in  Pope's  manner.  A  year  or 
two  later  a  young  friend  died  and  left  him 
^"900,  thus  enabling  him  to  give  himself  up 
entirely  to  poetry.  With  his  sister  Dorothy  he 
removed  to  Alfoxden,  in  Somerset,  and  became 
the  neighbour  of  Coleridge. 

Coleridge  was  enthusiastic  in  his  brother- 
poet's  praise.  "  The  giant  Wordsworth,"  he  ex- 
claimed, "  God  love  him  !  "  and  "  I  feel  myself 
a  little  man  by  his  side."  In  her  turn,  Dorothy 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH  205 

Wordsworth  wrote  that  Coleridge  was  "  a  won- 
derful man."  A  breeze  sprang  up  when  Dorothy 
began  to  borrow  Mrs.  Coleridge's  shawls,  with- 
out asking  leave,  in  order  to  go  for  long  walks 
with  Mrs.. Coleridge's  husband:  but,  in  the  main, 
all  was  calm  and  bright. 

Lyrical  Ballads,  one  of  the  most  influential 
books  ever  published,  appeared  anonymously  in 
1798.  It  was  the  joint  production  of  Coleridge 
and  Wordsworth,  and  was  hatched  out  of  a 
modest  desire  for  ^5.  Although  it  contained 
The  Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner  it  made  no  im- 
mediate impression  and  the  publisher  lost  his 
money.  Immediately  after  the  publication, 
Wordsworth  and  his  sister  started  for  Germany, 
where  many  of  his  best  shorter  poems  were 
written.  Among  these  are  the  stanzas  to  the 
mysterious  "  Lucy."  It  was  Lucy's  memory 
which  wrung  from  Wordsworth  the  only  out- 
burst of  lyrical  passion  in  all  his  work  : — 

But  she  is  in  her  grave ;  and  oh 
The  difference  to  me  ! 

On  their  return  to  England  the  brother  and 
sister  made  their  way  to  Grasmere.  Here,  first 
in  a  small  cottage,  now  set  apart  as  a  memorial 


206  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

of  the  poet,  and  afterwards  at  Rydal  Mount,  a 
somewhat  better  house,  from  which  he  could 
look  down  on  Rydal  Water,  he  remained  for  the 
rest  of  his  days,  wedded  to  those  changeful 
glories  of  the  weather  concerning  which  he 
writes  admiringly  that  they  "will  often  tempt 
an  inhabitant  to  congratulate  himself  on  belong- 
ing to  a  country  of  mists  and  clouds  and  storms, 
and  make  him  think  of  the  blank  sky  of  Egypt, 
and  of  the  caerulean  vacancy  of  Italy,  as  an  un- 
animated  and  even  a  sad  spectacle."  The  salary 
he  received  as  Distributor  of  Stamps  for  Cum- 
berland and  Westmoreland,  supplemented  by 
two  or  three  small  legacies,  enabled  him  to  en- 
joy for  over  fifty  years  in  this  solitude  that 
"  plain  living  and  high  thinking,"  of  which  he 
was  both  preceptor  and  exemplar.  Here  is 
Dorothy  Wordsworth's  description  of  their  first 
home  at  Grasmere  : — 

We  are  daily  more  delighted  with  Grasmere  and 
its  neighbourhood.  Our  walks  are  perpetually  varied, 
and  we  are  more  fond  of  the  mountains  as  our  ac- 
quaintance with  them  increases.  We  have  a  boat 
upon  the  lake,  and  a  small  orchard  and  smaller 
garden,  which,  as  it  is  the  work  of  our  own  hands, 
we  regard  with  pride  and  partiality.  Our  cottage  is 


RYDAL  MOUNT  :  THE  HOUSE  OF  WORDSWORTH. 

After  T.  Creswick,  R.A. 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH  207 

quite  large  enough  for  U8,  though  very  small ;  and 
we  have  made  it  neat  and  comfortable  within  doors ; 
and  it  looks  very  nice  on  the  outside ;  for  though  the 
roses  and  honeysuckles  which  we  have  planted  against 
it  are  only  of  this  year's  growth,  yet  it  is  covered  all 
over  with  green  leaves  and  scarlet  flowers ;  for  we 
have  trained  scarlet  beans  upon  threads,  which  are 
not  only  exceedingly  beautiful  but  very  useful,  as 
their  produce  is  immense.  We  have  made  a  lodging- 
room  of  the  parlour  below  stairs,  which  has  a  stone 
floor,  therefore  we  have  covered  it  all  over  with 
matting.  We  sit  in  a  room  above  stairs,  and  we  have 
one  lodging-room  with  two  single  beds,  a  sort  of 
lumber-room,  and  a  small  low  unceiled  room,  which 
I  have  papered  with  newspapers,  and  in  which  we 
have  put  a  small  bed.  Our  servant  is  an  old  woman 
of  sixty  years  of  age,  whom  we  took  partly  out  of 
charity.  She  was  very  ignorant,  very  foolish,  and 
very  difficult  to  teach.  But  the  goodness  of  her 
disposition,  and  the  great  convenience  we  should 
find  if  my  perseverance  was  successful,  induced  me 
to  go  on. 

To    this    sister    Dorothy,    Wordsworth    was 
indebted  in  many  ways.     Of  her  he  wrote  : — 

Mine  eyes  did  ne'er 
Fix  on  a  lovely  object,  nor  my  mind 
Take  pleasure  in  the  midst  of  happy  thoughts, 
But  either  She  whom  now  I  have,  who  now 


zoS     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Divides  with  me  this  loved  abode,  was  there, 
Or  not  far  off.     Where'er  my  footsteps  turned, 
Her  voice  was  like  a  hidden  Bird  that  sang, 
The  thought  of  her  was  like  a  flash  of  light, 
Or  an  unseen  companionship,  a  breath 
Of  fragrance  independent  of  the  Wind. 

It  is  of  her  also  that  he  sings  : — 

The  Blessing  of  my  later  years 

Was  with  me  when  a  boy  : 
She  gave  me  eyes,  she  gave  me  ears  ; 
And  humble  cares  and  delicate  fears  ; 
A  heart,  the  fountain  of  sweet  tears ; 

And  love,  and  thought,  and  joy. 

In  1802  the  poet  married  Mary  Hutchinson, 
of  Penrith,  a  woman  adapted  in  every  way  to 
share  his  thoughts  and  add  to  the  quiet  bliss  of 
his  life.  She  and  Dorothy  were  the  companions 
of  his  daily  walks,  the  sharers  of  his  reading  and 
conversation,  and  each  in  the  form  of  inspiration 
or  criticism  rendered  him  invaluable  aid.  The 
quality  of  Mrs.  Wordsworth's  mind  may  be 
inferred  from  the  poet's  statement  that  she 
was  the  author  of  those  two  fine  lines  in  The 
Daffodils  :— 

They  flash  upon  the  inward  eye 
Which  is  the  bliss  of  solitude. 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH  209 

Of  the  genesis  of  that  same  ever-golden  poem 
the  sister's  diary  also  affords  us  a  pleasant 
glimpse  : — 

April  15,  1802.  When  we  were  in  the  woods 
below  Gowbarrow  Park  we  saw  a  few  daffodils  close 
to  the  water  side.  As  we  went  along  there  were 
more,  and  yet  more ;  and  at  last,  under  the  boughs  of 
the  trees,  we  saw  there  was  a  long  belt  of  them  along 
the  shore.  I  never  saw  daffodils  so  beautiful,  They 
grew  among  the  mossy  stones  about  them ;  some 
rested  their  heads  on  the  stones  as  on  a  pillow  j  the 
rest  tossed,  and  reeled,  and  danced,  and  seemed  as  if 
they  verily  danced  with  the  wind,  they  looked  so  gay 
and  glancing. 

Quiet  was  the  life  spent  by  the  poet  in  that 
fair  country,  and  the  quiet  has  passed  into  his 
work.  His  poetry  is  singularly  free  from  the 
heat  of  passion ;  never  stirred  by  violent  emotion. 
The  strength  of  the  mountain  and  the  depth  and 
translucency  of  the  lake  have  passed  into  it ; 
much  too  of  the  steady  simple  life  of  the  people. 
The  shepherd,  the  beggar,  the  strolling  tinker, 
the  woodman,  the  leech-gatherer,  the  wagoner — 
these  are  the  types  on  which  Wordsworth  loves 
to  dwell.  Into  their  homely  cares,  their  un- 
romantic  toils  and  hopes  he  enters  with  the 
o 


210  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

sympathy  of  one  who  is  above  and  yet  ever 
with  them,  intent  on  showing  how  in  primitive 
instinct  and  feeling  they  are  one  with  the  most 
highly  born.  But  he  does  not  present  them  as 
isolated  beings  for  their  simple  human  sake.  He 
uses  them  as  the  greatest  landscape-painters  use 
the  forms  of  short-statured,  short-lived  men  in 
their  foregrounds  to  bring  out  by  contrast  the 
hugeness  of  the  everlasting  hills.  In  Words- 
worth Nature  is  not  a  background  for  Humanity, 
like  painted  scenery  in  a  theatre :  but  Humanity 
is  a  foreground  for  Nature. 

Professional  criticism  was  slow  to  understand 
this  new  departure  in  poetry.  Jeffrey,  for  ex- 
ample, began  his  notice  of  The  Excursion  in  The 
Edinburgh  Review  with  the  words,  "  This  will 
never  do."  Byron  dubbed  the  same  work  "  a 
drowsy,  frowsy  poem."  But  Wordsworth  worked 
on  until  his  greatness  could  not  be  concealed. 
Official  recognition  came  in  1843,  wnen  ne  was 
made  Poet-Laureate.  As  if  to  seal  him  with 
the  Great  Seal  of  the  kings  of  English  poetry, 
Death  took  him  in  1850,  on  23rd  April — the 
anniversary  of  Shakespeare's  birth  and  of  Shake- 
speare's death. 


WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH  211 

A  lack  of  humour,  and,  by  consequence,  a 
lack  of  self-criticism,  permitted  Wordsworth  to 
hand  over  to  the  printer  many  reams  of  writ- 
ing for  which  the  waste-paper  basket  had  been 
a  better  place.  Like  his  own  Lake  Country,  his 
poems  abound  in  barren  wastes  through  which 
one  must  tramp  wearifully  to  find  "  bits "  and 
beauty-spots  here  and  there.  Several  of  the 
autobiographical  passages,  which  have  been 
quoted  a  few  pages  back,  illustrate  the  frequent 
prosiness  of  his  verse.  Indeed,  when  modern 
poets  are  in  playful  mood  they  often  amuse 
themselves  by  inventing  such  preposterous 
Wordsworthian  lines  as  the  well-known 

A  Mr.  Wilkinson,  a  clergyman. 

But,  when  the  tons  of  dross  have  been  carted 
away,  there  remains  a  heavier  weight  of  the 
finest  gold  than  can  be  put  to  the  credit  of  any 
other  English  poet  save  the  greatest  of  all.  At 
his  inspired  moments  he  was  the  equal  of 
Shakespeare  himself  in  splendid  simplicity,  as 
when  he  said  of  the  Miltonic  sonnet  that  "  the 
thing  became  a  trumpet."  He  was  the  occa- 
sional equal  of  Milton  in  magnificent  eloquence, 


212     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

as  when  he  spoke  of  the  ruined  tower,  which 
wears  royally  its  crown  of  weeds  through  the 
storms  of  centuries 

.    .    .    and  yet  cannot  sustain 
Some  casual  shout  that  breaks  the  silent  air, 
Or  the  unimaginable  touch  of  time. 

He  was,  once  or  twice,  the  equal  of  Keats  in 
wistful  reminiscence  of  the  antique,  as  when  he 
wished 

To  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn. 

But,  better  than  all  these  rivallings,  he  was 
Wordsworth  himself —  Wordsworth  who,  al- 
though he  lived  with  his  eyes  fixed  on  every- 
body's plains  and  hills  and  forests  and  waters, 
saw  them  all  in  "  the  light  that  never  was  on 
sea  or  land." 


SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE 

/T-VHOSE  who  believe  that  thirteen  is  an  un- 
lucky number  find  more  than  a  grain  of 
support  for  their  superstition  in  the  case  of 
"  S.  T,  C."  The  author  of  The  Ancient  Manner 
was  the  thirteenth  child  of  the  Rev.  John  Cole- 
ridge, vicar  of  Ottery  St.  Mary,  in  Devonshire  ; 
and,  from  his  birth  on  2ist  October,  1772,  to 
his  death  on  25th  July,  1834,  bad  luck  dogged 
him  like  his  own  shadow. 

The  vicar  of  Ottery  St.  Mary  could  not  have 
been  without  learning  ;  for,  on  the  ground  that 
"  Hebrew  was  the  immediate  language  of  the 
Holy  Ghost,"  he  was  accustomed  to  edify  his 
rustics  by  sprinkling  his  sermons  with  Hebrew 
quotations.  And,  if  absence  of  mind  implies 
the  presence  of  the  Muse,  he  may  also  have  had 
the  poetical  temperament :  for  it  is  recorded  of 
him  that,  having  put  on  a  clean  shirt  every  day 
for  half  a  week,  his  wife  was  puzzled  as  to  the 

213 


2i4     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

whereabouts  of  the  old  ones  until  they  were 
discovered,  one  over  another,  upon  his  person. 
But  this  kindly  father  and  tutor  died  when  his 
thirteenth  child  was  only  eight  years  old. 

A  presentation  was  obtained  for  the  little 
orphan  at  Christ's  Hospital,  and  he  entered 
the  school  as  a  charity- boy  one  stuffy  July. 
Among  his  school-mates  was  Charles  Lamb, 
destined  to  be  his  friend  for  fifty  years  :  but 
while  Coleridge's  school-days,  unbroken  by  a 
single  holiday  at  home,  filled  his  mind  with  an 
extraordinary  abundance  of  learning,  they  kept 
him  heart-hungry  and  soul-sore.  On  certain 
holidays  the  boys  were  turned  out  of  the  school 
from  early  morning  to  sunset ;  and  in  rainy 
weather  those  who  had  no  friends  in  London 
would  wander  wretchedly  about  waiting  for  the 
gates  to  reopen.  On  one  of  these  leave-days, 
the  home-sick  little  Coleridge  attempted  to 
apprentice  himself  to  a  good-natured  shoe- 
maker, but  merely  got  stormed  at  and  knocked 
down  by  one  of  the  schoolmasters  for  his  pains. 

Later  on,  he  "  became  wild  to  be  apprenticed 
to  a  surgeon."  His  brother  Luke  had  come 
to  London  to  walk  the  hospitals.  "  Oh  !  the 


SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE       215 

bliss,"  he  said,  "  if  I  was  permitted  to  hold  the 
plaisters  !  "  But  surgery  could  not  charm  him 
for  long.  Metaphysics  and  theology  possessed 
him  so  completely  that,  in  the  streets,  he  would 
keep  an  eye  open  for  any  one  "  dressed  in 
black"  in  the  hope  of  finding  by  chance  a  philo- 
sophical auditor  or  antagonist.  Last  of  all  came 
the  summons  of  Poetry.  Providence  often  uses 
humble  instruments  :  and  it  was  The  Monody  at 
Matlock  and  kindred  effusions  by  the  Poet 
Bowles  which  wooed  Coleridge  into  the  literary 
life.  At  the  time  he  was  enjoying  a  delicious 
attack  of  calf-love  for  an  admirable  young 
milliner  which  doubtless  prepared  the  Poet 
Bowles's  way. 

In  due  course  Christ's  Hospital  sent  forward 
its  charity-boy  to  Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  as 
a  charity  student.  His  bad  luck  went  with  him. 
Without  delay  a  touting  upholsterer  called  on 
the  fresh  and  green  undergraduate  and  asked 
him  how  he  would  like  his  rooms  furnished. 
"  Just  as  you  please,  sir,"  answered  Coleridge 
respectfully,  in  the  belief  that  he  was  speaking 
to  one  of  the  college  officials.  It  is  said  that 
the  wily  townsman  straightway  involved  his 


216  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

customer  in  a  debt  of  nearly  ^100.  Coleridge 
quickly  won  the  Browne  gold  medal  for  a  Greek 
ode :  but  his  money  worries  and  the  unpleasant- 
ness which  arose  out  of  his  sympathy  with 
Unitarianism  and  the  French  Revolution  gradu- 
ally made  Cambridge  intolerable.  Before  the 
Christmas  of  1793  he  ran  away. 

Throughout  his  life  Coleridge  clung  affection- 
ately to  the  appellation  "  S.  T.  C.,"  which  had 
been  given  to  him  in  the  nursery.  He  loved  to 
transmute  it  into  Greek  (Icrr^o-e)  ;  and  in  the 
epitaph  which  he  composed  for  himself  shortly 
before  his  death,  he  wrote  : — 

Stop,  Christian  passer-by !     Stop,  child  of  God, 
And  read  with  gentle  breast.     Beneath  this  sod 
A  poet  lies,  or  that  which  once  seem'd  he.- — 
O,  lift  one  thought  in  prayer  for  S.  T.  C.  ; 
That  he  who  many  a  year  with  toil  of  breath 
Found  death  in  life,  may  here  find  life  in  death  ! 
Mercy  for  praise — to  be  forgiven  for  fame 
He  asked,  and  hoped  through  Christ, 
Do  thou  the  same. 

Accordingly  when  the  runaway,  after  spending 
a  winter's  night  coiled  up  on  a  doorstep  in 
Chancery  Lane,  enlisted  in  a  regiment  of 
dragoons,  he  preserved  his  beloved  initials  by 


SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE       217 

taking  the  name  of  Silas  Titus  Comberback. 
On  his  own  confession  he  rode  execrably  and 
groomed  his  horse  and  himself  vilely:  never- 
theless, he  became  a  favourite  in  the  regiment 
because  he  could  write  love-letters  for  the  illiter- 
ate troopers  and  tend  the  sick  in  hospital.  But 
learning,  like  murder,  will  out.  One  day  Trooper 
Comberback  scribbled  on  the  white-washed  wall 
beside  his  horse,  "  Eheu  !  quam  infortunii 
miserrimum  est  fuisse  felicem."  An  officer  who 
saw  the  writing  knew  that  it  was  Latin  even 
if  he  could  not  translate  it :  and  the  end  of  the 
affair  was  Silas  Titus  Comberback's  discharge 
from  the  army,  and  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge's 
return  to  Cambridge. 

But  Cambridge  could  not  keep  him.  During 
the  summer  of  the  same  year  (1794),  the  poet  ran 
against  Southey,  who  was  to  become  his  brother- 
in-law  ;  against  Cottle,  who  afterwards  published 
Lyrical  Ballads ;  and  against  Sara  Fricker,  his 
destined  bride.  The  young  people  were  soon 
all  drunk  with  a  Utopian  doctrine  called  "  Pan- 
tisocracy."  With  hardly  a  £10  note  between 
them,  they  planned  the  chartering  of  a  ship  which 
was  to  take  themselves  and  some  co-disciples 


218     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

and  a  load  of  ploughs  and  harrows  to  found  an 
ideal  commonwealth  or  Earthly  Paradise  on  the 
banks  of  the  Susquehanna.  On  the  strength  of 
this  wild-cat  scheme,  Coleridge  broke  with  his 
University  and  quitted  Cambridge  without  taking 
his  degree. 

When  Pantisocracy  ended  in  smoke,  at  first 
Coleridge  appears  to  have  thought  that  he  was 
under  no  further  obligations  to  his  Pantisocratic 
Sara.  But  the  sober  Southey  thought  differently. 
He  hunted  the  lagging  lover  out  of  the  Angel 
Tavern  in  London  and  bore  him  off  in  triumph 
to  Bristol,  where  Coleridge  and  Sara  Fricker 
were  married  in  October,  1795,  at  St.  Mary's, 
RedclifFe,  the  church  in  which  Chatterton  had 
affected  to  find  the  MSS.  of  Rowley.  Six  weeks 
later  Southey  was  married  in  the  same  church  to 
Sara  Pricker's  sister  Edith.  Edith  had  the  best 
of  the  four-sided  bargain  :  for  while  Sara  had 
captured  by  far  the  greater  poet  she  had  also 
burdened  herself  with  by  far  the  more  imprac- 
ticable bridegroom. 

For  a  time  the  wedding-bells  went  on  chiming 
sweetly.  Coleridge  carried  his  bride  to  a  cottage 
near  Clevedon — a  white-washed,  rose-hung  place 


ST.  MARY  REDCLIFFE,  BRISTOL. 

(IN  THIS   CHURCH  COLERIDGE  AND   SOUTHEY   WERE   MARRIED  I   AND,    IN    ITS  MUNIMENT 
ROOM,    CHATTERTON    PROFESSED   TO    FIND  THE   MS.    REMAINS  OF    ROWLEY.) 

(After  y.  Varley.) 


VALETTA. 

WHERE   COLERIDGE    LIVED    AS   SECRETARY   TO   THE   GOVERNOR   OF    MALTA. 

(After  Samuel  front.) 


SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE       219 

one  story  high.  Cottle  was  paying  him  thirty 
guineas  for  a  volume  of  poems,  and  he  was 
earning  a  trifle  by  journalism  as  well.  But  the 
wolf  was  not  far  from  the  cottage  door  :  and 
to  chase  it  away,  the  young  husband  decided  to 
issue  a  paper  called  The  Watchman. 

As  with  his  second  and  equally  disastrous 
journalistic  venture  The  Friend^  which  Coleridge 
began  in  1809,  The  Watchman  was  so  planned 
as  to  invite  failure.  To  evade  the  stamp-tax, 
the  paper  appeared  every  eighth  day  instead  of 
every  seventh,  so  that  the  subscribers  received 
it  one  day  later  each  week.  By  canvassing  him- 
self, the  editor  started  with  nearly  a  thousand 
subscribers  :  but  they  died  off  like  flies  in  frost 
when  they  found  themselves  paying  fourpence 
for  such  articles  as  an  Historical  Sketch  of  the 
Manners  and  Religion  of  the  Ancient  Germans^  intro- 
ductory to  a  Sketch  of  the  Manner  s^  Religion ,  and 
Politics  of  present  Germany.  With  number  ten  The 
Watchman  breathed  its  last. 

Coleridge  was  twenty-three.  Although  he 
had  failed  of  his  ambitions  as  a  cobbler  and 
a  surgeon,  he  had  already  been  a  dragoon,  an 
editor,  and,  probably,  a  tutor.  But  more  roles 


220  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

were  in  store  for  him.  In  1796,  the  year  which 
saw  the  birth  and  death  of  The  Watchman,  he 
issued  his  first  volume  of  poems  ;  he  became  a 
proud  father  ;  and  he  preached  "  in  a  blue-coat 
and  a  white  waistcoat "  at  certain  Unitarian 
chapels.  Both  poems  and  sermons  were  failures. 
The  poems  were  practically  ignored  ;  and  the 
first  sermon,  which  was  on  the  Hair  Powder 
Tax,  drove  most  of  its  seventeen  hearers  to 
sleep,  and  the  rest  clean  out  of  the  chapel.  As 
for  the  poet's  first-born  son  Hartley,  he  grew 
up  into  a  brilliant  failure  and  allowed  intemper- 
ance to  nullify  half  his  gifts  as  a  poet.  More 
ill-luck  attended  Coleridge's  experiment,  in  this 
same  year  1796,  with  a  literary  pupil  or  boarder. 
The  boarder  was  an  estimable  young  man  :  but 
it  turned  out  that  he  was  subject  to  fits.  Even 
the  advent  of  William  and  Dorothy  Words- 
worth brought  bitters  as  well  as  sweets.  The 
long  walks  and  earnest  talks  of  the  two  poets 
— both  of  them  old  friends  of  the  Revolution — 
stirred  up  the  authorities  to  "  shadow "  them 
by  means  of  a  spy  ;  and,  worse  still,  the  guile- 
less Dorothy's  frequent  strolls  with  her  new 
friend  nettled  Mrs.  Coleridge  and  even  caused 


SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE       221 

her  to  gloat  a  little  over  the  fact  that  the 
resultant  Lyrical  Ballads  "  were  not  liked  at  all 
by  any." 

By  this  time  Coleridge  had  left  Clevedon  and 
had  established  his  family  at  Nether  Stowey. 
And,  despite  a  hundred  harassments  and  dis- 
appointments, it  was  during  his  residence  at 
Nether  Stowey  that  all  the  poetry  by  which 
Coleridge  stands  out  as  a  truly  great  and 
amazing  poet  was  written.  His  career  as  an 
author  extends  over  forty  years  :  but  if  the 
works  dated  1797-8  were  struck  out  of  his 
writings,  he  would  be  remembered  to-day,  only 
by  a  few  students,  as  a  first-class  critic  who 
also  wrote  verses.  It  is  true  that  one  great 
composition — the  second  part  of  Christabel — is 
dated  1801  :  but  there  is  little  doubt  that  in 
writing  it  down  the  poet  was  lightening  his 
brain  of  inventions  which  had  clung  to  it  ever 
since  the  first  part  of  Christabel  was  written. 

Coleridge  himself  believed  that  Chrisfabetywh\ch 
he  never  finished,  was  the  finest  of  all  his  poems: 
and  it  is  notorious  that  upon  some  minds  Christ- 
abel produces  an  extraordinary  effect.  Shelley, 
for  example,  fainted  away  on  hearing  the  lines 


222  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

about  "  the  shrunken  serpent  eyes "  of  the 
sorceress  Geraldine.  But  ordinary  readers,  who 
lack  Shelley's  gift  for  swooning,  mostly  rank 
even  the  priceless  fragments  of  Christabel  far 
below  the  wholly  splendid  and  amazing  Rime  of 
the  Ancient  Manner.  Indeed,  there  are  many 
persons,  of  whom  the  writer  of  these  pages  con- 
fesses himself  to  be  one,  who  treasure  The  Ancient 
Mariner  not  only  as  the  best  of  the  works  of 
Coleridge,  but  also  as  the  greatest  single  poem 
in  the  English  language. 

The  Ancient  Mariner  was  written  for  money. 
Coleridge,  together  with  William  and  Dorothy 
Wordsworth,  had  need  of  £$  to  pay  the  ex- 
penses of  a  little  tour  :  and  The  Ancient  Mariner 
was  to  be  the  two  poets'  joint  work.  But 
Wordsworth  retired  from  the  task  :  and  the 
scheme  was  changed  in  favour  of  a  joint  volume 
of  poems,  which  Cottle  ultimately  brought  out 
as  Lyrical  Ballads.  When  Lyrical  Ballads  ap- 
peared, it  contained  only  four  pieces  by  Cole- 
ridge to  nineteen  by  Wordsworth  ;  and  of 
Coleridge's  pieces  three  were  short  and  unim- 
portant. But  the  fourth  was  The  Ancient  Mariner. 

Like  the  Wedding  Guest  who  sat  on  a  stone 


SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE       223 

and  "  listened  like  a  three  years'  child,"  a  born 
disciple  of  The  indent  Mariner  "  cannot  choose 
but  hear."  Speaking  through  this  poem,  Cole- 
ridge still  cries  to  every  kindred  spirit : 

I  pass  like  night  from  land  to  land ; 
I  have  strange  power  of  speech  ; 
That  moment  that  his  face  I  see, 
I  know  the  man  that  must  hear  me  : 
To  him  my  tale  I  teach. 

In  no  other  poem  can  one  find  such  pictures 
painted,  such  music  played.  When  the  Manner 
reached  the  silent  sea  : — 

All  in  a  hot  and  copper  sky 
The  bloody  Sun  at  noon, 
Right  up  above  the  mast  did  stand, 
No  bigger  than  the  Moon. 

Day  after  day,  day  after  day, 
We  stuck,  nor  breath  nor  motion  ; 
As  idle  as  a  painted  ship 
Upon  a  painted  ocean. 

Water,  water,  everywhere, 
And  all  the  boards  did  shrink  ; 
Water,  water,  everywhere 
Nor  any  drop  to  drink. 

The  very  deep  did  rot :   O  Christ ! 
That  ever  this  should  be  ! 
Yea,  slimy  things  did  crawl  with  legs 
Upon  the  slimy  sea. 


224     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Upon  the  accursed  ship  thus  becalmed  there 
bore  down  a  phantom  vessel  :  and 

When  that  strange  shape  drove  suddenly 
Betwixt  us  and  the  Sun, 

the  sun  shone  through  the  black  barque's  ribs  : 

As  if  through  a  dungeon-grate  he  peered 
With  broad  and  burning  face. 

Death  and  a  Woman  were  the  phantom  ship's 
whole  crew. 

The  naked  hulk  alongside  came, 
And  the  twain  were  casting  dice, 

Nothing  more  beautiful  has  ever  been  written 
than  the  breaking  of  the  spell  after  the  Mariner 
had  vainly  tried  to  pray  for  seven  days  and 
seven  nights,  "  with  a  heart  as  dry  as  dust," 
while  his  "four  times  fifty"  dead  comrades  lay 
round  him,  their  dead  eyes  all  wide  open  to 
curse  him.  The  moon  was  up  :  and 

Her  beams  bemocked  the  sultry  main, 
Like  April  hoar-frost  spread  ; 
But  where  the  ship's  huge  shadow  lay, 
The  charmed  water  burnt  alway 
A  still  and  awful  red. 


SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE      225 

Beyond  the  shadow  of  the  ship, 

I  watched  the  water-snakes  : 

They  moved  in  tracks  of  shining  white, 

And  when  they  reared,  the  elfish  light 

Fell  off  in  hoary  flakes. 

Within  the  shadow  of  the  ship 

I  watched  their  rich  attire  : 

Blue,  glossy  green,  and  velvet  black, 

They  coiled  and  swam  ;  and  every  track 

Was  a  flash  of  golden  fire. 

O  happy  living  things !  no  tongue 

Their  beauty  might  declare  : 

A  spring  of  love  gushed  from  my  heart, 

And  I  blessed  them  unaware  : 

Sure  my  kind  saint  took  pity  on  me, 

And  I  blessed  them  unaware. 

The  self-same  moment  I  could  p.  ay  ; 
And  from  my  neck  so  free 
The  Albatross  fell  off,  and  sank 
Like  lead  into  the  sea. 

It  is  out  of  fashion  nowadays  for  a  critic  to 
underline  particular  beauties  of  technique  in  a 
poem  :  but  so  vast  has  been  the  influence  of 
The  Ancient  Mariner  upon  English  prosody  that 
its  rhythmical  wonders  call  for  illustration. 
Coleridge  took  up  the  rude  irregularities  of  the 
popular  ballad-form  and  drew  from  them  the 


226  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

subtlest  of  mimetic  effects.  Notice  the  twitter- 
ing abundance  of  syllables  in  this  stanza  : — 

Sometimes  a-dropping  from  the  sky 
I  heard  the  sky-lark  sing  ; 
Sometimes  all  little  birds  that  are, 
How  they  seemed  to  fill  the  sea  and  air 
With  their  sweet  jargoning ! 

And  contrast  it  with  the  second  line  of 

And  now,  all  in  my  own  countree 
I  stood  on  the  firm  land  ! 

where  the  verse,  after  quavering  like  moonlit 
ripples,  suddenly  shrinks  and  hardens  into  a 
rock-like  solidity. 

It  was  in  his  Ancient  Mariner  year  that  Cole- 
ridge wrote  the  first  part  of  Christabel  and  the 
magical  dream-fragment  beginning  : — 

In  Xanadu  did  Kubla  Khan 

A  stately  pleasure-dome  decree  : 
Where  Alph,  the  sacred  river  ran 
Through  caverns  measureless  to  man 
Down  to  a  sunless  sea. 

But  the  world  did  not  want  his  poems.  His 
tragedy  Osorio  lay  unacted  for  ten  years.  To 
pay  his  way,  Coleridge  accepted  a  post  as 
minister  of  a  Unitarian  chapel  at  Shrewsbury. 


SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE       227 

From  this  position,  however,  he  was  delivered 
by  the  brothers  Wedgwood,  sons  of  the  famous 
potter,  who  made  him  an  allowance  of  ^150  a 
year.  With  the  Wordsworths,  Coleridge  set 
out  for  Germany,  where  he  mastered  enough 
of  the  language  to  produce  on  his  return  a  ver- 
sion of  Schiller's  Wallenstein  so  fine  that  Schiller 
himself  did  not  disdain  to  improve  his  work  by 
translating  one  of  Coleridge's  interpolations  into 
German.  But,  commercially,  the  English  Wallen- 
stein  was  a  dead  failure. 

Proposals  were  made  to  Coleridge  about  this 
time  from  the  Morning  Post,  with  hints  of  an 
eventual  ^"2000  a  year.  But  the  poet  wrote 
back  that  he  "  could  not  give  up  the  country  and 
the  lazy  reading  of  old  folios  for  two  thousand 
times  two  thousand  pounds,"  and  added,  "  be- 
yond ^350  a  year,  I  consider  money  a  real 
evil."  Accordingly  he  followed  Wordsworth's 
example  and  settled  down  in  the  Lake  Country. 
His  home  was  at  Greta  Hall  in  a  fairy  spot  near 
Keswick.  For  two  or  three  years  he  wrote  hard. 
Then  health  failed.  Partly  as  a  belated  punish- 
ment for  the  youthful  folly  of  swimming  the 
New  River  in  his  clothes  and  partly  through 


228  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

repeated  drenchings  in  the  rainiest  corner  of 
England,  he  was  tortured  by  rheumatism  and 
gout.  Unhappily  he  heard  of  a  quack  remedy 
called  "  the  Kendal  Black  Drop,"  which  led  on 
to  so  frightful  a  drug-habit  that  the  poor  slave 
would  consume  two  quarts  of  laudanum  a  week 
and,  at  his  worst,  a  whole  quart  in  twenty-four 
hours. 

It  is  better  to  hurry  the  pace  of  the  heart- 
breaking story.  The  poor  life  went  on  darken- 
ing through  a  twilight  of  weakness  and  dis- 
couragement to  a  black  midnight  of  shame  and 
despair.  For  a  time  he  was  secretary  to  the 
Governor  of  Malta.  Next,  he  drifted  to  Rome, 
breaking  off  all  communication  with  his  wife 
and  friends,  and  leaving  his  family  to  subsist  on 
the  Wedgwood  pension.  Returning  at  last  to 
England  he  drifted  hither  and  thither  until  the 
breach  with  his  wife  was  complete.  His  second 
journalistic  venture  The  Friend  was  a  ruinous 
failure.  At  last  he  was  reduced  to  the  ignomini- 
ous routine  of  condensing  reports  for  a  London 
daily  at  a  salary  so  small  that  he  was  forced  to 
walk  all  the  way  from  Fleet  Street  to  Hammer- 
smith every  night  to  save  the  nine  shillings  a 


SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE  229 
week  which  would  have  carried  him  by  coach. 
And  this  was  he  who,  according  to  De  Quincey, 
was  "  the  largest  and  most  spacious  intellect,  the 
subtlest  and  most  comprehensive,  that  has  yet 
existed  among  men." 

But  at  the  age  of  forty-five  he  made  a  last 
desperate  clutch  at  a  floating  plank  and  never 
afterwards  let  it  go.  Of  his  own  motion  he 
entered  the  house  of  Dr.  Gillman,  of  Highgate. 
He  himself  gave  the  written  order  that  he  must 
not  be  permitted  to  leave  the  house  without 
oversight,  and  that  "  delicately  or  indelicately " 
even  the  servants  must  assist  in  this  coercion. 
De  Quincey's  doubts  notwithstanding,  Cole- 
ridge appears  to  have  broken  his  chains  and  to 
have  renounced  opium.  From  Dr.  Gillman's  he 
published  Christabel,  Eiographia  Liter aria^  Aids  to 
Reflection^  and  several  smaller  volumes.  But  ill- 
luck  kept  him  company  to  the  end.  When  at 
last  he  scored  a  popular  success  with  Zapolya,  of 
which  two  thousand  copies  were  sold  in  six 
weeks,  the  publishers  went  bankrupt. 

Coleridge  died  on  25th  July,  i  834.  The  last 
eighteen  years  of  his  life  were  all  spent  with  the 
kindly  Gillman.  He  recovered  his  self-respect ; 


230     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

and  though  he  was  often  hard  put  to  it  to 
find  the  fifty  shillings  a  week  for  his  board 
and  lodging  he  did  not  disdain  even  the  writ- 
ing of  school-books  in  order  to  pay  his  way. 
He  had  emerged  from  Unitarianism  into  the 
Old  Theology,  and  much  of  his  leisure  went 
to  a  "  great  work  "  on  Christianity  as  the  true 
philosophy,  which  he  bequeathed  to  the  world 
as  an  oral  tradition  rather  than  as  a  formal  writ. 
Charles  Lamb  described  the  old  poet  as  "an 
archangel — a  little  damaged."  Carlyle,  jealous 
perhaps  of  the  man  who  had  preceded  and  ex- 
celled him  as  a  student  and  translator  of  German 
literature,  dipped  an  ill-mended  pen  in  vinegar 
and  gall  and  wrote  a  patronizing  and  too  famous 
account  of  Coleridge  as  mean  of  spirit  as  it  is 
slovenly  of  letter.  Nor  was  his  fame  helped  by 
certain  Scots  who  laboured  hard  to  keep  a  great 
Englishman  out  of  his  own  by  calling  Chrhtabel 
"an  impertinence"  and  Biographia  Literaria  "wild 
ravings,"  and  by  declaring  that  the  public  had 
accepted  The  Ancient  Mariner  like  "  a  lying  puff 
or  a  quack  advertisement."  As  a  result,  most 
people  think  of  Coleridge  as  a  weakling  and  a 
failure  from  beginning  to  end.  The  truth  is 


SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE       231 

that  this  thirteenth  child,  this  charity-boy,  this 
despiser  of  money,  this  poet  too  great  for  his 
time,  never  had  a  full  chance.  It  was  pain,  not 
a  craving  for  unholy  pleasure,  which  drove  him 
to  opium  :  and  yet  he  triumphed  over  his  habit 
when  he  was  homeless  and  almost  friendless  and 
past  his  prime.  But,  in  spite  of  opium,  he  was 
not  a  failure.  He  left  behind  him  the  most 
searching  and  sound  expositions  of  poetry  ever 
attempted  by  an  Englishman.  He  plumbed  new 
depths  in  Shakespeare.  He  was  the  generator 
of  the  best  in  Rossetti,  and  especially  of  The 
Blessed  Damozel.  He  was  the  powerful  publicist 
who,  according  to  Fox,  tore  up  the  Treaty  of 
Amiens.  And  he  wrote  The  Ancient  Mariner. 


LORD    BYRON 

CTV/TADE  in  Germany"  might  almost  be  the 
label  affixed  to  Byron's  reputation.  And 
this  is  one  of  the  cases  in  which  the  German 
manufacturers'  product  is  both  cheap  and  nasty. 
Byron  was  imitated  and  idolized  in  Germany 
because  of  his  cheap  rhetoric  and  nasty  ethics. 
Germans  who  were  too  ignorant  of  our  language 
to  distinguish  between  English  poetry  and 
English  versifying  hailed  Byron  for  what  he 
said,  heedless  of  the  way  he  said  it  :  as  if  they 
were  criticizing  a  reformer  or  a  philosopher 
instead  of  a  professing  poet.  Indeed,  these 
Germans  did  not  criticize  Byron  at  all.  To  them 
he  was  a  romantic  figure  who  bowled  them  off 
their  critical  feet.  The  facts  of  his  life  thrilled 
them.  Was  he  not  a  real  milord  ?  Had  not 
his  predecessor  in  the  title,  "  the  wicked  Lord 
Byron,"  slain  one  Chaworth  ;  and  had  not 

232 


LORD  BYRON  233 

Byron  himself  made  passionate  love  to  Mary, 
the  murdered  Chaworth's  beautiful  daughter  ? 
Did  he  not  live  in  a  Gothic  abbey — not  a  lath- 
and-plaster  abbey,  like  Horace  Walpole's,  but  an 
ancient  pile,  most  appropriately  ruined  ?  Did 
not  the  women  go  mad  over  his  curly  head  and 
adorable  melancholy  ?  Was  he  not  as  handsome 
and  proud  and  wicked  as  Lucifer  ?  And  had  he 
not  swum  the  Hellespont,  like  a  new  Leander  ? 
To  the  facts  about  Byron,  Germany  added  a 
tinselled  heap  of  half-truths  and  whole  fictions. 
Germany  believed  that  he  had  ploughed  the  seas 
as  a  corsair,  that  he  had  rescued  Circassian 
beauties  in  distress,  that  he  had  slain  an  infidel 
with  a  scimitar,  and  that  he  had  really  and  truly 
captured  a  Turkish  island.  Most  welcome  of 
all  was  the  undeniable  fact  that  Byron  had  slapped 
British  prudery  in  the  face.  Unlike  the  timid 
innovators  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  who  had 
been  content  to  revolt  from  classical  standards  in 
poetry  without  throwing  over  the  current  religion 
and  morality,  the  dashing  young  milord  had 
boldly  carried  the  Revolution,  both  by  precept 
and  example,  into  the  moral  and  religious  sphere. 
Byronic  collars,  Byronic  curls,  Byronic  languors 


234     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

became  the  only  wear  among  the  Sorrowful 
Werthers  of  the  Fatherland.  Germany  believed, 
and  to  a  large  extent  believes  still,  that  the  flashy 
Byron  is  the  most  considerable  English  poet 
since  Shakespeare. 

George  Gordon  Byron  was  not  born  a  Lord  or 
even  an  Honourable.  His  father,  Captain  John 
Byron,  or  "  Mad  Jack,"  was  a  worthless  rake 
who  took  for  his  second  wife  Miss  Catherine 
Gordon,  a  great  heiress,  of  Gight,  in  Aberdeen- 
shire.  A  rhyme  of  the  day,  which  swiftly  came 
true,  asked  : — 

O  whare  are  ye  gaen,  bonny  Miss  Gordon, 
O  whare  are  ye  gaen,  sae  bonny  and  braw  ? 

Ye've  married,  ye've  married  wi'  Johnny  Byron 
To  squander  the  lands  of  Gight  awa'. 

The  father  forsook  his  wife  and  child  soon 
after  the  birth  of  the  latter  in  Holies x  Street, 
Cavendish  Square,  London,  on  22nd  January, 
1788,  and,  pressed  by  his  creditors,  fled  to  the 
Continent.  He  had  a  daughter,  Augusta,  by  a 
previous  marriage,  who  afterwards  became  Mrs. 
Leigh  and  the  dearest  friend  of  her  half-brother, 
the  poet.  The  mother,  left  now  with  only  a 
scanty  pittance  of  ^150  a  year,  removed  with 


LORD  BYRON  235 

her  child  to  Aberdeen.  Here  she  was  rejoined 
by  her  scapegrace  of  a  husband,  but  their  fiery 
tempers  soon  drove  them  apart,  and  for  a  while, 
though  they  lodged  in  the  same  street,  it  was  at 
opposite  ends.  The  father  wished  to  have  the 
child  with  him,  but  Mrs.  Byron  objected.  The 
nurse,  however,  slyly  suggested  that  one  night's 
experience  of  the  restless  mite  would  probably  be 
enough  to  satisfy  paternal  longings.  So  it  proved. 
Next  morning  Captain  Byron  relinquished  his 
charge  without  entreaty. 

Stormy,  self-willed,  rebellious,  was  the  little 
Byron,  yet  quick  to  respond  to  a  touch  of  gentle- 
ness. Once,  when  reprimanded  by  his  nurse  for 
soiling  his  dress,  he  tore  it  in  a  moment  from  top 
to  bottom,  imitating  instinctively  the  manner  in 
which  he  had  seen  his  angry  mother  rend  her 
caps  and  gowns. 

Untaught  in  youth  my  heart  to  tame, 
My  springs  of  life  were  poisoned. 

His  twisted  leg  and  foot  intensified  this 
natural  irritability.  The  poor  child  suffered  a 
martyrdom  through  the  efforts  made  by  quacks 
and  others  to  straighten  his  limb.  "  What  a 
pretty  boy  Byron  is,"  remarked  a  friend  of  his 


236  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

nurse.  "  What  a  pity  he  should  have  such  a 
leg."  "Don't  speak  of  it,"  cried  the  child, 
cutting  at  her  with  his  whip,  while  his  eyes 
flashed  fire.  This  sensitiveness  he  carried  to 
the  end,  and  emphasized  by  it  a  defect  that 
otherwise  would  hardly  have  been  observed. 
His  mother,  in  her  reckless  moods,  was  so 
lamentably  lacking  in  sense  and  pity  as  to  call 
him  "  a  lame  brat."  Was  it  unnatural  that  when 
a  school-fellow  said  to  him,  "  Your  mother  is  a 
fool,"  he  should  answer  sadly  and  without 
remonstrance,  "I  know  it"?  A  brighter  glimpse 
is  given  us  by  Mr.  Rogers,  the  private  tutor 
with  whom  he  read  Virgil  and  Cicero.  Once, 
when  they  were  reading  together,  the  tutor 
observed  sympathetically,  "  It  makes  me  un- 
comfortable, my  lord,  to  see  you  sitting  there  in 
such  pain  as  I  know  you  must  be  suffering." 
"Never  mind,  Mr.  Rogers,"  said  the  boy,  "you 
shall  not  see  any  signs  of  it  in  me." 

From  boyhood  he  was  vain  of  his  rank,  feeling 
it  greater  to  be  a  lord  than  a  poet.  It  is  said 
that  when  he  became  heir  to  the  title,  and  his 
name  was  read  out  in  school  with  "  Dominus  " 
prefixed,  he  burst  into  tears.  "  We  shall  have 


LORD  BYRON  *37 

the  pleasure  some  day  of  reading  your  speeches 
in  the  House  of  Commons,"  observed  a  friend, 
in  a  complimentary  tone.  "  I  hope  not," 
answered  the  nine-year-old  aristocrat.  "  If  you 
read  any  speeches  of  mine,  it  will  be  in  the 
House  of  Lords."  He  took  his  place  in  that 
august  chamber  in  due  course,  but  only  addressed 
it  three  times,  on  each  occasion,  it  may  be 
remarked,  in  advocacy  of  justice  and  freedom. 

One  of  the  earliest  samples  of  his  poetic 
leanings  is  seen  in  some  lines  written  about  his 
eleventh  year.  A  meddling  old  lady  who  believed 
that  after  death  she  would  migrate  to  the  lunar 
world,  used  to  visit  his  mother.  She  offended 
him  somehow  ;  whereupon  he  cried  out,  "  I 
cannot  bear  the  sight  of  the  witch,"  and  wrote  : — 

In  Nottingham  county,  there  lives  at  Swan  Green, 
As  curst  an  old  lady  as  ever  was  seen, 
And  when  she  does  die,  which  I  hope  will  be  soon, 
She  firmly  believes  she  will  go  to  the  moon. 

The  first  ten  years  of  Byron's  life  were  spent 
in  Scotland,  and  he  probably  imbibed  there  his 
love  of  mountain  scenery.  But,  after  leaving  it 
with  his  mother  in  1798,  he  never  returned  ; 
and  when  a  lady  suggested  in  after  years  that 


238     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

there  was  a  touch  of  northern  accent  in  his 
speech,  he  exclaimed  petulantly,  with  a  brace  of 
oaths,  "  I  hope  not.  I  would  rather  the  whole 
country  was  sunk  in  the  sea.  I — the  Scotch 
accent !  "  And  yet  he  could  write  in  Hours  of 
Idleness : — 

Years  have  rolled  on,  Loch  na  Garr,  since  I  left  you, 

Years  must  elapse  ere  I  tread  you  again  : 
Nature  of  verdure  and  flowers  has  bereft  you, 

Yet  still  are  you  dearer  than  Albion's  plain  : 
England  !  thy  beauties  are  tame  and  domestic, 

To  one  who  has  rov'd  on  the  mountains  afar  : 
Oh !  for  the  crags  that  are  wild  and  majestic, 

The  steep  frowning  glories  of  dark  Loch  na  Garr. 

Of  course  these  jingles  are  quoted  here  solely 
for  their  autobiographical  interest.  If  Byron's 
writings,  as  poetry,  did  not  often  rise  above  this 
level  he  could  have  no  proper  place  in  a  book  on 
the  great  English  poets. 

In  1 80 1  Byron  was  sent  to  Harrow,  where  he 
remained  till  1805.  He  ^ac^  previously  spent 
two  years  in  the  boarding-school  of  Dr. 
Glennie  at  Dulwich,  his  mother  doing  much  by 
injudicious  treatment  to  spoil  his  disposition  and 
hinder  his  progress.  In  one  respect  the  school 
served  him  well,  for  Dr.  Glennie  writes  :  "  In 


LORD  BYRON  239 

my  study  he  found  many  books  open  to  him  ; 
among  others,  a  set  of  our  poets  from  Chaucer 
to  Churchill,  which  I  am  almost  tempted  to  say 
he  had  more  than  once  perused  from  beginning 
to  end."  At  Harrow  he  worked  fitfully,  inter- 
spacing days  of  fervid  industry  with  weeks  of 
loitering  indifference,  yet  gaining,  nevertheless, 
a  working  acquaintance  with  the  classics.  He 
was  then  and  afterwards  an  omnivorous  reader. 
History  and  biography,  philosophy,  poetry,  and 
divinity,  and  the  works  of  such  writers  as 
Fielding,  Smollett,  Sterne,  Richardson,  Mac- 
kenzie, Cervantes,  Rabelais,  and  Rousseau  were 
eagerly  devoured.  "  I  read  eating,"  he  says, 
"read  in  bed,  read  when  no  one  else  reads." 

The  high  estimate  he  placed  on  rank  found 
illustration  in  his  intercession  on  behalf  of  Lord 
Delawarr.  To  the  senior  whose  function  it  was 
to  deal  out  punishment  for  offences,  he  said,  "I 
find  you  have  got  Delawarr  on  your  list ;  pray 
don't  lick  him."  "  Why  not  ? "  was  asked. 
"  Why,  I  don't  know,  except  that  he  is  a  brother 
peer."  But  it  is  fair  to  remember  along  with 
this  what  he  said  to  a  lame  youth  whom  he  had 
taken  under  his  protection  :  "  Harness,  if  any 


240  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

one  bullies  you,  tell  me,  and  I'll  thrash  him  if 
I  can,"  a  pledge  that  was  not  left  unfulfilled. 
This  readiness  to  relieve  and  defend  those  in 
need  characterized  him  all  through  life.  He 
presented  ^"1000,  when  he  could  ill  spare  it,  to 
the  Rev.  Francis  Hodgson,  a  college  friend,  to 
enable  him  to  pay  off  debts  that  had  come  to 
him  through  inheritance,  and  Hodgson  wrote 
enthusiastically :  "  Oh  if  you  only  knew  the 
exultation  of  heart,  aye,  and  of  head  too,  I  feel 
at  being  free  from  those  depressing  embarrass- 
ments, you  would,  as  I  do,  bless  my  dearest 
friend  and  brother,  Byron."  This  is  far  from 
being  a  solitary  example  of  his  beneficence.  Leigh 
Hunt,  with  others,  shared  his  bounty,  and  to 
Coleridge  he  gave  £100  to  help  him  out  of 
straits,  besides  aiding  him  to  find  a  publisher  for 
Christabel.  It  is  matter  of  history  how  he 
sacrificed  time,  money,  health,  and  even  life  itself 
in  the  cause  of  Greek  independence.  In  short, 
there  are  letters  of  gold  as  well  as  black  blots  in 
the  recording  angel's  chronicle  of  Byron's  head- 
long life. 

The  three  years  he  spent  at  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  do  not  count  for  much,  save  in  the 


BYRON  AT  THE  AGE.  OF  NINETEEN. 

After  G.  Saunders. 


LORD  BYRON  241 

friendships  Byron  formed.  A  youth  of  seventeen, 
with  his  passions  and  training  and  an  allowance 
of  £$oo  a  year  and  a  servant,  was  not  likely  to 
stand  up  like  a  stone  wall  against  the  allurements 
of  idleness  and  dissipation.  Possibly  he  gained 
more  from  the  river  than  from  tutors,  for  he 
writes  :  "  Though  Cam  is  not  a  very  translucent 
wave  we  used  to  dive  for  and  pick  up  plates, 
eggs,  and  even  shillings."  Byron,  despite  his 
lameness,  was  an  accomplished  swimmer  ;  and  it 
is  well  known  how  he  and  Lieutenant  Ekenhead 
swam  across  the  Hellespont  from  Sestos  to 
Abydos,  an  achievement  he  refers  to  wittily  in 
the  lines  : — 

He  could,  perhaps,  have  passed  the  Hellespont, 

As  once  (a  feat  on  which  ourselves  we  prided) 
Leander,  Mr.  Ekenhead,  and  I  did. 

It  was  while  he  was  at  the  University  that 
Hours  of  Idleness^  his  first  volume  of  poetry, 
appeared. 

I,  too,  can  scrawl,  and  once  upon  a  time 
I  poured  along  the  town  a  flood  of  rhyme, 
A  schoolboy  freak,  unworthy  praise  or  blame  ; 
I  printed — older  children  do  the  same. 
'Tis  pleasant,  sure,  to  see  one's  name  in  print ; 
A  Book's  a  Book,  altho'  there's  nothing  in't. 


242     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

The  volume  was  generously  received.  Indeed, 
he  remarked  jestingly  to  a  correspondent  that 
his  works  were  "praised  by  reviewers,  admired 
by  duchesses,  and  sold  by  every  bookseller  in  the 
Metropolis."  To  this  friendliness  there  was  one 
exception.  The  Edinburgh  Review  hewed  the 
book  to  pieces.  Byron  waited,  "  nursing  his 
wrath  to  keep  it  warm";  then,  in  1809,  published 
a  slashing  rejoinder  in  verse,  under  the  title  of 
English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers.  This  pro- 
duction, brimming  with  wit  and  biting  invective, 
though  lacking  frequently  in  critical  insight, 
revealed  the  young  poet  as  a  power  to  be  reckoned 
with.  Soon  after  its  publication  Byron  went 
abroad,  giving  the  next  two  years  to  travel  in 
Portugal,  Spain,  Malta,  Albania,  and  eastward  as 
far  as  Constantinople.  He  brought  back  with 
him  the  first  two  cantos  of  Childe  Harold.  These 
were  published  in  1812,  and  proved  so  popular 
that  he  was  able  to  say,  "  I  awoke  one  morning 
and  found  myself  famous." 

He  was  now  twenty-four  years  of  age,  and  the 
idol  of  society.  During  the  next  three  years  he 
poured  out  in  rapid  succession  those  romances  in 
verse,  The  Giaour,  The  Bride  of  Abydos^  and  The 


LORD  BYRON  243 

Corsair.  The  second  of  these  was  "  thrown  off 
in  four  nights."  Of  the  third,  ten  thousand 
copies  were  sold  on  the  day  of  publication. 

Despite  his  public  success,  Byron's  life  was 
soon  soured  by  private  miseries.  The  fatal  step 
was  his  hasty  marriage  with  Anna  Isabella 
Milbanke,  only  daughter  of  Sir  Ralph  Milbanke. 
In  affairs  of  the  heart  he  was  not  a  novice. 
At  the  age  of  ten  he  had  fallen  so  wildly  in  love 
with  his  cousin,  Mary  Duff,  that  the  news  of  her 
marriage  almost  threw  him  into  convulsions. 
At  eleven,  his  infatuation  with  another  cousin, 
Margaret  Parke,  was  so  complete  that  he  could 
neither  eat  nor  sleep.  Again,  when  a  youth  at 
Harrow,  Byron's  affections  had  been  captured  by 
Mary  Anne  Chaworth,  heiress  to  the  estates 
adjoining  his  own,  and  every  attentive  student  of 
his  life  feels  that  this  was  the  one  passion  that 
touched  him  to  the  quick,  and  to  which  his  whole 
heart  beat  true.  Mary  Chaworth,  after  encourag- 
ing his  attentions,  married  another,  and  the 
disappointment  wove  a  strand  of  bitterness  into 
all  his  after  experience.  Miss  Milbanke  was  not 
the  woman  to  quench  his  misanthropy  or  to 
wean  him  from  his  vices.  She  may  have  loved, 


244  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

but  was  hardly  of  a  nature  large  and  flexible 
enough  to  understand  him.  He  was  proud,  she 
self-poised  ;  she  cool,  he  passionate  ;  he  wild  and 
she  puritanical.  He  was  hardly  of  the  stuff  out 
of  which  ideal  husbands  are  made,  but  she  must 
have  known  his  quality  before  she  accepted  him. 
They  were  married  on  the  second  day  of  the 
year  1815,  and  on  the  fifteenth  of  the  following 
January,  only  five  weeks  after  the  birth  of  a 
daughter,  Lady  Byron  left  home  ostensibly  to 
pay  a  visit,  but  returned  no  more.  Why  she  so 
suddenly  and  completely  broke  with  her  husband 
remains  a  mystery.  It  is  known  that  she  had 
coldly  asked  him  "When  he  meant  to  give  up  his 
bad  habit  of  making  verses  " — a  question  which 
for  ingeniously  concentrated  provocativeness, 
equals  the  familiar  "  Have  you  given  up  beating 
your  grandmother  ? "  But,  amid  a  flow  of 
conflicting  reports,  and  without  any  sure  word 
from  the  parties  most  nearly  concerned,  there  can 
be  no  clear  statement  of  reasons  or  accurate 
apportionment  of  blame.  Byron  certainly  did 
not  fail  to  blame  himself,  though  at  the  same 
time  he  discussed  the  affair  with  an  unpardonably 
large  public  in  the  lines  : — 


LORD  BYRON  245 

Though  my  many  faults  defaced  me, 

Could  no  other  arm  be  found, 
Than  the  one  which  once  embraced  me, 

To  inflict  a  cureless  wound  ? 

Possibly  he  was  not  far  from   the   truth  when 
he  added  : — 

Serenely  purest  of  her  sex  that  live, 
But  wanting  one  sweet  weakness — to  forgive  ; 
Too  shocked  at  faults  her  soul  can  never  know, 
She  deems  that  all  could  be  like  her  below  : 
Foe  to  all  vice,  yet  hardly  Virtue's  friend — 
For  Virtue  pardons  those  she  would  amend. 

Within  a  few  months  a  legal  separation  was 
effected.  But  public  opinion  was  against  him  ; 
and  almost  immediately  afterwards  Byron  left 
England  never  to  return.  During  the  next  nine 
years  he  resided  abroad,  at  Geneva,  Venice, 
Ravenna,  Pisa,  Genoa,  frequently  in  company 
with  Shelley,  and  with  a  new  and  more  durable 
beloved,  the  Countess  Guiccioli.  But  always, 
even  amid  the  wildest  dissipations,  he  went  on 
pouring  out  a  stream  of  verse.  In  December, 
1823,  he  sailed  for  Missolonghi  to  share  in  the 
struggle  for  the  liberation  of  Greece.  It  is  note- 
worthy that  certain  Greeks  hinted  at  making 
Byron  their  king,  and  that  he  replied  :  "  If  they 


246     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

make  me  the  offer,  perhaps  I  will  not  reject  it." 
At  Missolonghi,  which  he  describes  as  a  "mud 
basket,"  he  was  placed  in  command  of  a  horde  of 
turbulent  recruits,  and  won  universal  praise  for 
his  vigour  and  brave  endurance  of  hardship  ; 
but  unfortunately,  before  anything  decisive 
could  be  effected,  he  was  seized  with  fever,  and 
died  on  i9th  April,  1824,  at  the  age  of  thirty- 
six. 

The  poetry  of  Byron  swept  Europe  like  a 
flood — fresh,  bold,  tumultuous,  and  not  without 
its  mire.  But,  like  a  flood,  its  sound  and  fury 
soon  abated.  Yet  it  cannot  be  truly  said  that 
the  stream  has  run  quite  dry.  Something 
remains. 

He  was  not  a  melodist  but  a  tune-monger  ; 
and  his  thin  and  heady  ditties  fall  upon  a  sensitive 
ear  pretty  much  as  a  music-hall  song  falls  on  the 
ear  of  a  man  who  has  just  emerged  from  a 
performance  of  Die  Walktire.  Nevertheless  his 
fluent  untortured  verse  supplied  one  more 
dose  of  the  corrective  which  needs  to  be  pre- 
scribed time  after  time  against  an  excess  of 
gravity  in  English  poetry.  Byron's  thought  is 
negligible  :  but,  as  a  social  satirist  in  cleverly 


! 
ss 


k 


LORD  BYRON  24? 

turned  stanzas,  he  has  penned  some  pages  that 
will  endure  ;  also  he  has  given  lasting  expression 
to  world-weariness  and  to  romantic  melancholy. 
English  readers  who  care  to  whet  their  appetites 
by  reading  his  admirable  letters  and  the  variegated 
records  of  his  life  will  be  able  to  read  a  great  part 
of  his  poetry :  while  students  of  European  literary 
history  in  general  will  always  be  forced  to  treat 
of  him  at  large.  He  will  never  be  a  poet  with- 
out honour  save,  perhaps,  in  his  own  country. 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

IKE  Byron,  Shelley  was  of  aristocratic  birth. 
Like  Byron,  Shelley  had  a  beautiful  face 
and  curling  hair.  Like  Byron,  Shelley  rushed 
into  a  mad  marriage  and  speedily  rushed  out 
again.  Like  Byron,  Shelley  outraged  the  British 
public  in  politics,  in  religion,  in  morality.  Like 
Byron,  Shelley  found  his  happiest  home  and 
wrote  his  best  work  in  Italy.  Like  Byron, 
Shelley  was  a  headlong  and  too  prolific  writer. 
Like  Byron,  Shelley  died  prematurely  and  in 
tragic  circumstances.  But,  unlike  Byron,  Shelley 
was  a  great  poet.  For  a  time  Byron  must  be 
included  in  books  on  the  great  English  poets 
because  greatness  has  been  thrust  upon  him  : 
but  Shelley  claims  his  place  as  of  right  because 
his  greatness  was  born  in  him.  Byron  threw 
off  volume  after  volume  sure  of  applause  and 
reward  from  all  Europe  :  but  Shelley,  amidst 

248 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY  249 

almost  universal  indifference  or  contempt,  sang 
simply  because  the  song  would  out. 

Turning  from  Shelley  the  poet  to  Shelley  the 
man,  one  finds  one's  ears  deafened  by  conflicting 
voices.  According  to  some,  he  ,was  a  callous 
and  worthless  libertine,  obeying  no  laws  save 
his  impulses  and  desires.  According  to  others, 
he  was  a  strayed  angel,  or  a  child  of  nature, 
wonderingly  tearing  his  raiment  and  wounding 
his  hands  and  feet  among  the  hedges  and  barbed 
fences  of  moral  customs  which  were  alien  to  his 
simple  soul.  He  hovers  between  heaven  and 
earth  like  a  phantom,  and  will  not  be  explained. 
"  Mad  Shelley,"  as  he  was  called  at  school,  would 
peer  into  the  faces  of  the  babes  he  met  in  the 
streets,  eager  to  capture  traces  of  the  wisdom 
brought  with  them  out  of  a  previous  life.  To 
peer  into  the  riddle  of  Shelley  himself  is  equally 
irresistible ;  and  it  yields  an  equally  contradic- 
tory result. 

Percy  Bysshe  Shelley  was  born  at  Field  Place, 
near  Horsham,  on  4th  August,  1792.  His  father, 
Timothy  Shelley,  was  a  conventional  country 
squire  of  an  ancient  family,  with  a  mind  that 
never  by  any  chance  strayed  beyond  the  sports 


25°     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

and  duties  of  his  station.  His  mother  bestowed 
on  him  her  beauty,  but  seems  to  have  been 
chary  of  any  further  benefaction.  Of  literary 
outflowering  in  the  garden  of  his  ancestry  there 
is  no  record. 

This  girlish-looking  youth,  with  blue  eyes, 
now  luminous,  now  mistily  dreamful,  curling 
brown  hair  speedily  turning  grey,  rosy  com- 
plexion and  gentle  but  excitable  temperament, 
found  himself  at  ten  years  of  age  dropped 
suddenly  into  the  midst  of  fifty  other  boys  at 
Sion  House  School,  Isleworth,  to  learn  from  the 
tyranny  of  elder  lads  how  rough  a  garb  even  at 
the  beginning,  life  can  wear,  particularly  to  the 
one  whose  shyness  withdraws  instinctively  from 
its  unfriendly  touch. 

A  fresh  May-dawn  it  was, 
When  I  walked  forth  upon  the  glittering  grass, 
And  wept,  I  knew  not  why  ;  until  there  rose 
From  the  near  school-room,  voices,  that,  alas ! 
Were  but  one  echo  from  a  world  of  woes — 
The  harsh  and  grating  strife  of  tyrants  and  of  foes. 

One  youth  stood  out  nobly  from  the  rest,  and 
though  Shelley  never  met  him  in  after  years,  he 
thought  of  him  always  as  having  been  to  him- 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY          25* 

self  and  ready  to  be  to  others,  "  a  covert  from 
the  storm,  a  hiding-place  from  the  tempest." 
He  said  : 

The  tones  of  his  voice  were  so  soft  and  winning, 
that  every  word  pierced  into  my  heart ;  and  their 
pathos  was  so  deep,  that  in  listening  to  him  the  tears 
have  involuntarily  gushed  from  my  eyes.  Such  was 
the  being  for  whom  I  first  experienced  the  sacred 
sentiments  of  friendship. 

Here,  too,  not  only  did  Friendship  first  stir 
his  breast,  but  Science  showed  him  that  romantic 
side  of  her  being  in  which  she  is  akin  to  poesy. 
For  years  afterwards,  both  at  Eton  and  at 
Oxford,  he  sought  by  curious  experiments  to 
augment  his  scientific  knowledge.  At  Eton 
he  advanced  in  classical  attainments,  devoured 
Lucretius  and  Pliny,  and  waxed  enthusiastic  over 
Godwin's  "  Political  Justice."  Before  leaving 
school  he  wrote  two  extravagant  romances, 
Zastrozzi  and  The  Rosicruciatt,  and  shared  in  the 
composition  of  a  poem  on  The  Wandering  Jew, 
and  a  volume  of  Original  Poetry  by  Victor  and 
Cazire,  which  was  lost  until  a  few  years  ago. 
Also  he  survived  an  episode  of  boyish  passion 
for  his  cousin,  Harriet  Grove. 


252     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

At  University  College,  Oxford,  where  he  re- 
mained only  from  the  Michaelmas  term,  1810, 
to  March,  1811,  his  visionary  ambition  to  mend 
the  world  or  make  a  new  one  at  a  stroke  found 
expression  in  the  shape  of  a  pamphlet  entitled, 
The  Necessity  of  Atheism.  This  invention  of 
which  necessity  was  not  the  mother,  entailed 
upon  him  no  lighter  penalty  than  expulsion  from 
the  University,  a  fate  shared  by  the  friend  whom 
he  had  found  there,  and  to  whom  we  are  in- 
debted for  admirable  sketches  of  the  poet's  life, 
Thomas  Jefferson  Hogg.  Both  were  expelled, 
not  expressly  for  writing  the  pamphlet,  but  for 
rebelliously  declining  to  deny  that  they  had  done 
so  when  interrogated  by  the  authorities.  In 
view  of  this  event  and  of  the  subsequent  denun- 
ciations to  which  Shelley  was  subjected,  it  may  be 
well  to  quote  the  words  of  one  of  his  biographers, 
John  Addington  Symonds  : 

He  had  a  vital  faith ;  and  this  faith  made  the  ideals 
he  conceived  seem  possible — faith  in  the  duty  and 
desirability  of  overthrowing  idols  ;  faith  in  the  gospel 
of  liberty,  fraternity,  equality ;  faith  in  the  divine 
beauty  of  nature ;  faith  in  a  love  that  rules  the  uni- 
verse ;  faith  in  the  perfectibility  of  man ;  faith  in  the 
omnipresent  soul,  whereof  our  souls  are  atoms ;  faith 


Photograph.  IV.  A.  Mansell. 

PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY. 

After  Amelia.  Cnrran. 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY          253 

in  affection  as  the  ruling  and  co-ordinating  substance 
of  morality.  The  man  who  lived  by  this  faith  was  in 
no  vulgar  sense  of  the  word  an  Atheist. 

Shelley  felt  and  declared,  doubtless  with  too 
great  a  vehemency  and  disregard  for  the  feel- 
ings of  others,  that  the  prevailing  views  of  a 
Divine  Ruler  of  the  universe  were  inadequate 
and  often  unworthy  ;  only  in  this  sense  could 
he  be  proclaimed  an  Atheist. 

The  two  friends  made  their  way  to  London, 
and  in  a  few  months  we  find  Shelley  entangled 
with  a  pretty  schoolgirl,  Harriet  Westbrook, 
and  eventually  eloping  with  her  to  Scotland,  not 
impelled  by  an  unlawful  passion,  but  apparently 
by  a  chivalrous  desire  to  rescue  her  from  the 
persecutions  of  her  family.  She  had  imbibed 
Shelley's  opinions,  represented  herself  as  suffer- 
ing on  account  of  them,  and  solicited  his  inter- 
vention. They  were  married  in  Edinburgh — 
she  only  sixteen,  and  he  but  three  years  older 
— tying  a  knot  with  their  tongues  which  in  a 
little  while  they  would  gladly  have  gnawed 
asunder  with  their  teeth.  For  a  season  the 
light  danced  around  them,  and  first  at  Edin- 
burgh, then  at  York,  then  at  Keswick,  then  at 


254     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Dublin,  then  at  Nantgwilt,  then  at  Lynmouth, 
then  at  Tremadoc,  then  in  London,  they  played 
with  life,  enjoying  the  game  ;  Harriet  reading 
aloud,  distributing  political  tracts,  studying  Latin, 
leaving  household  cares  to  her  mother-sister, 
Eliza,  who  kept  their  common  stock  of  money 
"  for  safety  in  some  nook  or  corner  of  her 
dress "  ;  Shelley  busying  himself  with  schemes 
for  bringing  prosperity  into  Ireland  and  shut- 
ting the  sea  out  of  Wales,  corresponding  with 
Godwin,  writing  Queen  Mab,  abjuring  animal 
food  and  alcohol,  living  on  bread  and  water  and 
buns,  or  when  something  more  substantial  was 
brought  him,  leaving  it  untasted  on  a  bookshelf 
for  hours,  and  asking  with  the  innocence  of  a 
child  at  the  close  of  the  day,  u  Have  I  dined  ? " 

So  far  we  have  the  strayed  angel  indeed,  and 
one  who,  in  the  Old  Testament  phrase,  needed 
but  a  morsel  of  bread  to  comfort  his  heart.  But 
the  angel  life  is  for  Paradise,  and  Paradise  is 
not  yet  here,  or  here  only  with  a  serpent  in 
the  grass.  The  two  so  loosely  knit  together 
gradually  drifted  apart ;  and  no  outsider  is  able 
to  decide  whether  Eliza,  or  Harriet,  or  Shelley, 
or  Circumstance  was  most  to  blame. 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY  255 

In  the  next  scene,  Mary  Godwin,  daughter  of 
the  author  of  Political  Justice,  fair-haired,  pale, 
and  with  a  piercing  look,  has  caught  the  poet's 
heart  in  her  strong  grasp.  "  Nothing,"  says  his 
friend  Peacock,  "  that  1  ever  read  in  tale  or 
history  could  present  a  more  striking  image 
of  a  sudden,  violent,  irresistible,  uncontrollable 
passion  than  that  under  which  I  found  him 
labouring,  when,  at  his  request,  I  went  up  from 
the  country  to  call  on  him  in  London."  Hence- 
forth Harriet  was  left  to  herself,  with  a  com- 
fortable allowance,  while  Shelley  and  Mary 
Godwin  set  up  house  together.  Their  affec- 
tion endured  and  they  married  after  Harriet's 
death.  Harriet  lived  only  two  years  after  the 
desertion.  Her  body  was  found  in  the  Serpen- 
tine in  November,  1816,  five  years  after  the 
runaway  marriage.  That  Shelley  acted  madly 
when  he  linked  his  life  to  this  excitable  school- 
girl few  will  deny  ;  that  he  acted  nobly  when 
he  turned  away  from  her  and  took  another, 
some  have  not  hesitated  to  affirm.  On  the  one 
hand,  he  has  been  called  an  inhuman  fiend  who 
put  his  revolutionary  and  atheistical  theories  so 
frightfully  into  practice  that  he  became  his 


256     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

girl-wife's  murderer.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
has  been  justified  on  the  Ibsenite  ground  that 
an  individual  must  "realize  himself"  and  "live 
his  life "  even  if  he  has  to  defy  society  and 
break  others'  hearts  in  the  process.  Probably 
the  truth  lies  between  the  extremes.  Shelley 
was  neither  pioneer  nor  devil.  He  was  still  a 
boy  ;  and  he  weakly  allowed  himself  to  be  swept 
along  by  sudden  passion.  Perhaps  the  chief 
shame  of  the  affair  is  that  Harriet's  two  tiny 
children  did  not  hold  their  father  to  her  side. 
They  dragged  like  anchors  in  a  typhoon.  But, 
as  father  if  not  as  husband,  Shelley  was  punished 
with  a  punishment  under  which  his  heart  ached 
to  the  end.  The  Court  of  Chancery  decided 
that  the  two  children  born  to  him  by  Harriet 
should  be  withdrawn  from  his  care,  and  that  he 
should  only  see  them  now  and  then.  In  the 
greater  moralities,  based  as  they  are  on  the 
sanctities  of  fatherhood  and  motherhood,  even 
poets  are  not  a  privileged  class  ;  and,  as  Shelley 
,  sowed,  so  had  he  to  reap. 

Yet  is  it  ever  to  be  remembered  that  this 
erring  Shelley,  according  to  the  testimony  of 
those  who  knew  him  best,  was  one  of  the  most 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY  257 

generous  and  self-denying  of  men,  ever  ready  to 
aid  those  in  distress,  impatient  of  coarseness  in 
word  or  thought,  scornful  of  indulgences  for 
himself,  indefatigable  in  visiting  and  relieving 
the  poor.  A  story  is  told  of  his  finding  a  poor 
woman  ill  on  Hampstead  Heath,  and  bearing 
her  from  door  to  door  in  search  of  shelter  and 
aid.  Byron,  who  spent  much  time  with  him 
abroad,  said  : 

He  was  the  most  gentle,  the  most  amiable,  and 
least  worldly-minded  person  I  ever  met ;  full  of 
delicacy,  disinterested  beyond  all  other  men,  and 
possessing  a  degree  of  genius  joined  to  simplicity  as 
rare  as  it  is  admirable. 

The  next  scene  in  Shelley's  short  life-drama 
is  laid  across  the  sea.  After  a  year  spent  at 
Marlow,  during  which  year  he  wrote  Laon  and 
Cythna^  afterwards  called  The  Revolt  of  Is/am,  and 
began  Prince  Athanase  and  Rosalind  and  Helen , 
threatenings  of  consumption  impelled  him  to 
seek  refuge  in  Italy.  He  left  England  in  the 
spring  of  1818,  and  after  sundry  changes  of 
residence,  settled  ultimately  at  Pisa.  Here  much 
of  Shelley's  best  known  work  was  achieved,  in- 
cluding Julian  and  Maddalo,  the  Ode  to  a  Sky- 


258     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

lark,  The  Sensitive  Plant,  The  Witch  of  Atlas, 
Epipsychidion,  and  Adonais,  the  latter  breaking 
from  him  on  hearing  of  the  death  of  Keats, 
and  under  the  impression  that  the  young  poet's 
career  had  been  shortened  by  an  unworthy 
review  in  the  Quarterly.  Prometheus  Unbound  and 
The  Cenci  had  been  written  previously,  the  former 
at  Rome,  the  latter  at  Leghorn. 

In  Italy  the  poet's  health  improved,  and  at 
Pisa  life  sped  pleasantly  in  association  with  the 
sympathetic  friends  he  found  in  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Williams  and  Captain  Edward  John  Trelawny. 
How  his  days  were  spent,  Trelawny  describes 
thus  : 

He  was  up  at  six  or  seven,  reading  Plato,  Sophocles, 
or  Spinoza,  with  the  accompaniment  of  a  hunch  of 
dry  bread ;  then  he  joined  Williams  in  a  sail  on  the 
Arno,  in  a  flat-bottomed  skiff,  book  in  hand,  and  from 
thence  he  went  to  the  pine-forest  or  some  out-of-the- 
way  place.  When  the  birds  went  to  roost  he  returned 
home,  and  talked  and  read  till  midnight. 

The  same  lively  pen  gives  us  a  vivid  picture 
of  the  birth  of  one  of  his  lyrics,  Ariel ^  to  Miranda 
take.  The  poet  was  alone  in  the  pine  woods 
according  to  his  wont. 


259 
Oh  !  there  are  spirits  in  the  air, 

And  genii  of  the  evening  breeze, 
And  gentle  ghosts,  with  eyes  as  fair 

As  star-beams  among  twilight  trees  : — 
Such  lovely  ministers  to  meet 
Oft  hast  thou  turned  from  men  thy  lonely  feet. 

Trelawny,  stumbling  across  him,  took  the  manu- 
script from  his  hand — 

It  was  a  frightful  scrawl ;  words  smeared  out  with 
his  finger,  and  one  upon  the  other,  over  and  over  in 
tiers,  and  all  run  together  in  most  "admired  dis- 
order " ;  it  might  have  been  taken  for  a  sketch  of  a 
marsh  overgrown  with  bulrushes,  and  the  blots  for 
wild  ducks  ;  such  a  dashed-off  daub  as  self-conceited 
artists  mistake  for  a  manifestation  of  genius.  On  my 
observing  this  to  him,  he  answered,  "  When  my  brain 
gets  heated  with  thought,  it  soon  boils,  and  throws 
off  images  and  words  faster  than  I  can  skim  them 
off.  In  the  morning,  when  cooled  down,  out  of  the 
rude  sketch  as  you  justly  call  it,  I  shall  attempt  a 
drawing." 

In  describing  the  magic  qualities  of  a  guitar 
in  this  same  lyric,  Shelley  gives  us  unwittingly 
a  charming  delineation  of  his  own  poetic  gift  : 

For  it  had  learnt  all  harmonies 
Of  the  plains  and  of  the  skies, 
Of  the  forests  and  the  mountains, 
Of  the  many-voiced  fountains  ; 


260     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

The  clearest  echoes  of  the  hills, 
The  softest  notes  of  falling  rills, 
The  melodies  of  birds  and  bees, 
The  murmuring  of  summer  seas, 
And  pattering  rain,  and  breathing  dew, 
And  airs  of  evening  ;  and  it  knew 
That  seldom-heard  mysterious  sound, 
Which,  driven  on  its  diurnal  round, 
As  it  floats  through  boundless  day, 
Our  world  enkindles  on  its  way. 

In  May,  1822,  Shelley  and  his  friends  rented 
a  villa  in  the  bay  of  Lerici,  a  smaller  inlet  within 
the  bay  of  Spezzia.  According  to  his  wife  : 

His  days  were  chiefly  spent  on  the  water ;  the 
management  of  his  boat,  its  alterations  and  improve- 
ments, were  his  principal  occupation.  At  night,  when 
the  unclouded  moon  shone  on  the  calm  sea,  he  often 
went  alone  in  his  little  shallop  to  the  rocky  caves  that 
bordered  it,  and,  sitting  beneath  their  shelter,  wrote 
The  Triumph  of  Life,  the  last  of  his  productions. 

His  health  was  good,  he  had  attained  to  fuller 
command  of  his  powers,  and  works  of  surpass- 
ing excellence,  both  in  poetry  and  prose,  might 
have  been  expected  of  his  pen  ;  but  the  fates 
had  willed  otherwise. 

On  8th  July,  he  and  Williams  returned  from 
Pisa,  whither  they  had  gone  to  meet  Leigh 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY  261 

Hunt,  with  whom  they  had  spent  a  pleasant 
week.  The  last  seen  of  them  alive  was  when, 
with  a  sailor  boy,  Charles  Vivian,  they  started 
in  their  sailing-boat  to  cross  the  bay.  It  was 
a  sultry  afternoon,  and  a  mist  soon  blotted  them 
from  sight.  Then  swept  across  the  waters  a 
roaring  tempest.  It  only  lasted  twenty  minutes, 
but  when  it  passed  all  trace  of  the  poet  and  his 
companions  had  vanished.  Now  followed  a  week 
of  dreadful  suspense  for  the  women  at  Villa 
Magni,  and  for  Trelawny  left  at  Leghorn.  On 
1 8th  July  the  bodies  were  washed  up  on  the 
shore.  In  one  pocket  of  Shelley's  jacket  was 
found  his  copy  of  Sophocles,  and  in  the  other 
Keats's  poems,  "  doubled  back,"  says  Trelawny, 
"  as  if  the  reader,  in  the  act  of  reading,  had 
hastily  thrust  it  away." 

Shelley's  body  was  cremated  on  the  shore  of 
the  bay  in  the  presence  of  Byron  and  Leigh 
Hunt,  and  the  ashes  were  deposited  in  the  Pro- 
testant cemetery  at  Rome.  His  heart,  which 
refused  to  take  the  flame,  was  entrusted  first 
to  Leigh  Hunt,  and  afterwards  to  Mrs.  Shelley, 
and  is  now  at  Boscombe. 

The  proof  of  Shelley's  poetry  is  in  the  read- 


262     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

ing  :  and  he  must  be  read  in  bulk  rather  than 
in  samples.  Ignored  in  his  lifetime  and  some- 
what over-praised  fifty  years  after  his  death,  at 
the  opening  of  the  twentieth  century  his  fame 
has  suffered  from  an  excessive  reaction.  Upon 
the  poets  who  have  followed  him  his  influence 
has  been  small  ;  and  there  are  otherwise  good 
judges  of  poetry  who  can  peruse  his  works  with- 
out becoming  convinced  of  his  greatness.  But, 
at  his  best,  and  especially  in  his  lyrical  and 
rhapsodical  moments,  he  is  very  great  indeed. 
He  soars  up  as  eagerly  as  a  bird  and  sings  as 
radiantly  ;  and  in  and  out  of  his  dustiest  and 
dullest  pages  his  spirit  is  forever  appearing 
and  evanishing  like  a  white  flame. 


JOHN  KEATS 

"  T  THINK  I  shall  be  among  the  English  Poets 
after  my  death."  So  wrote  Keats  to  his 
publishers  in  1818,  soon  after  Blackwood's 
Magazine  had  disgraced  itself  by  telling  "  Johnny 
Keats "  to  go  "  back  to  the  shop  and  stick  to 
plaisters,  pills,  and  ointment  boxes."  Death 
made  haste  to  take  up  the  youth's  challenge  ; 
and  within  three  years  Keats  dictated  from  his 
last  couch  in  Rome  the  epitaph  "  Here  lies  one 
whose  name  was  writ  in  water."  He  died  at 
twenty-five — an  age  at  which  Shakespeare  had 
not  penned  a  serious  line.  Yet  it  was  the 
prophecy  of  1 8 1 8  that  came  true  :  and  the  epitaph 
of  1821,  which  was  breathed  in  humility  and 
resignation  rather  than  in  bitterness  and  revolt, 
will  itself  outlast  nearly  all  the  names  that  are 
writ  in  brass  on  tables  of  stone.  Keats  is  "among 
the  English  Poets." 

263 


264  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

One  might  almost  say  that  he  was  not  merely 
a  Poet  but  that  he  was  Poetry.  It  was  Keats 
who  wrote  : — 

I  find  I  cannot  exist  without  poetry — without 
eternal  poetry — half  the  day  will  not  do — the  whole  of 
it. 

Spenser,  "  the  Poets'  Poet,"  first  fired  Keats  with 
the  desire  to  write  :  and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  for  the  last  two  years  of  his  life  he  almost 
ceased  to  belong  to  the  common  world  and 
became  all  Poetry  and  Love. 

To  plod  through  the  chronicles  of  this  unearthy 
life,  registering  the  dates  of  the  poet's  comings 
and  goings,  the  names  of  the  men  and  women  he 
knew,  the  towns  and  houses  he  lived  in,  and  the 
intrigues  of  knaves  or  fools  who  are  best  for- 
gotten, would  be  to  write  of  Keats  in  an  un-Keats- 
like  and  misleading  way.  To  some  extent  this  is 
true  of  every  exquisite  and  romantic  poet.  But 
it  is  doubly  true  of  the  poets  of  the  nineteenth 
century  and  trebly  true  of  Keats.  In  a  playful 
fragment  called  Modern  Love  he  himself  expressed 
the  feeling  of  incongruity  with  which  we  find  that 
some  dulcet  singer  of  old-world  loves  is  a  person 
like  ourselves,  wearing  clothes  as  ugly  as  our 


JOHN  KEATS. 

After  William  Hilton,  K.A. 


JOHN  KEATS  265 

own,  and  riding  for  twopence  in  the  same  under- 
ground trains.  After  the  ironical  lines 

Then  Cleopatra  lives  at  number  seven, 
And  Antony  resides  in  Brunswick  Square, 

Keats  bursts  out  : — 

Fools !  make  me  whole  again  that  weighty  pearl 
The  Queen  of  Egypt  melted,  and  I'll  say 
That  ye  may  love  in  spite  of  beaver  hats. 

Of  course  one  may  love  as  truly  in  a  beaver  hat  as 
in  a  casque  of  bronze,  or  a  jewelled  tiara,  or  with 
vine-leaves  in  one's  unbound  tresses.  But,  so  far 
as  the  spectators  are  concerned,  the  beaver  hat  is  a 
disability,  and,  since  the  passing  of  knee-breeches, 
it  is  the  same  with  poetry  as  with  love.  In  The 
Eve  of  St.  Agnes  and  Isabella  and  Lamia  and 
Endymwn  and  The  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn  and 
Hyperion^  Keats  was  writing  about  the  Middle 
Ages  and  the  Grecian  sense  of  beauty  and  the 
primeval  wars  of  the  Titans  ;  and  a  too  full 
picture  of  his  late  Georgian  circumstances  could 
therefore  suggest  only  oddity  and  a  lack  of  touch 
with  warm  and  real  life.  Accordingly,  only 
the  major  facts  about  Keats  will  be  set  down 
here. 


266     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

In  the  eyes  of  the  scholars  and  gentlemen 
who  were  encouraged  to  use  Blackwood's  for  the 
damning  of  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Byron, 
Leigh  Hunt,  Shelley,  and  Keats,  one  of  Keats' 
prime  offences  was  his  being  a  Cockney.  But 
so  were  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Milton,  Pope,  Blake. 
He  first  saw  daylight  on  3ist  October,  1795,  at 
the  "Swan-and-Hoop"  in  the  City.  That  he  was 
born  in  a  stable  will  not  be  reckoned  to  his  dis- 
honour by  Christian  men.  Thomas  Keats,  the 
father,  was  from  the  West  of  England.  He 
had  married  his  employer's  daughter,  Frances 
Jennings  ;  and,  as  the  livery  stables  paid  well, 
John  Keats  eventually  came  into  legacies  which 
enabled  him  to  throw  up  medicine  and  surgery 
and  to  devote  himself,  though  not  without 
occasional  worries,  to  poetry. 

But  Poetry  was  in  no  hurry  to  call  Keats  into 
her  service.  Until  The  FaSrie  Queen  roused  him 
up  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  he  did  not  scribble 
verses.  On  the  contrary,  he  was  loved  and  feared 
at  school  as  a  boy  who  cared  little  for  books,  but 
would  "fight  any  one — morning,  noon,  and  night, 
his  brother  among  the  rest.  Fighting  was  meat 
and  drink  to  him."  This  and  the  kindred  fact 


JOHN  KEATS  267 

that  at  Guy's  Hospital  he  successfully  performed 
several  operations,  including  the  opening  of  a 
man's  temporal  artery,  are  not  noted  here, 
however,  in  a  spirit  of  mere  gossip.  On 
the  strength  of  the  mis-statement  implied  in 
the  well-known  lines 

Who  killed  John  Keats  ? 
"  I,"  said  The  Quarterly, 

many  people  have  formed  that  belief  that  "Johnny 
Keats  "  was  a  whimpering  weakling  who  crawled 
into  a  quiet  place  and  died  because  the  great  big 
critics  were  unkind  to  him.  Schoolboys  who 
felt  the  power  of  his  right  arm  and  sufferers  who 
shrank  under  the  calm  skill  of  his  lancet  could 
have  told  a  different  tale. 

Left  fatherless  at  the  age  of  eight,  and  mother- 
less seven  years  later,  John  Keats  was  not  sent 
by  his  guardian  to  a  university.  Like  Blake,  he 
was  bound  apprentice  before  he  completed  his 
fifteenth  year.  But  while  Blake,  as  the  pupil  of 
an  engraver,  was  kept  in  touch  with  the  things 
of  art,  Keats,  as  a  surgeon's  assistant,  had  to 
move  in  a  world  of  gruesome  reality.  Whether 
he  lost  or  gained  by  missing  his  Oxford  or 


268     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

his  Cambridge  is  a  question  which  has  been 
abundantly  argued  from  both  sides.  But  one 
can  say  confidently  no  more  than  this  :  that  the 
author  of  the  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn  never  learned 
Greek  either  in  school  or  out  of  it  :  that  he 
found  Homer  through  Chapman  ;  that  his 
knowledge  of  Grecian  lore  was  gained  from  a 
"  pantheon  "  and  a  classical  dictionary  :  and  that 
Keats,  either  in  spite  of,  or  because  of,  his  ignor- 
ance, succeeded  in  revivifying  more  of  the  old 
Grecian  world  than  all  the  learned  Cambridge 
poets  put  together.  But  to  call  Keats  himself, 
as  some  have  done,  "  a  Greek  "  is  a  mistake.  He 
sang  the  life  of  the  old  world  so  well  because  he 
was  neither  in  it  nor  of  it.  He  was  a  looker-on, 
seeing  the  best  of  the  game.  In  short,  to  use  the 
jargon  of  criticism,  he  was  an  English  romanticist 
extemporizing  on  classical  themes. 

One  afternoon  Cowden  Clarke  read  Spenser's 
Epithalamium  to  the  eighteen-year-old  medical 
student  and  also  lent  him  The  Fae'rie  Queen  to 
take  home.  According  to  Cowden  Clarke,  the 
youth  went  "  ramping  with  delight "  through 
Spenser's  faerie-land.  One  of  Spenser's  phrases, 
"  the  sea-shouldering  whales,"  had  such  an  effect 


JOHN  KEATS  269 

upon  him  that  he  seemed  to  hoist  himself  up  and 
to  imitate  the  leviathan's  monstrous  motion. 
For  a  year  or  two  more  he  worked  on  at  medicine 
and  surgery  :  but  Spenser  had  called  and,  in  due 
time,  his  heir  and  successor  obeyed. 

Keats'  first  volume  was  published  in  1817. 
Its  contents  are  often  set  aside  as  affected  and 
stiff.  Yet  they  contain  the  lines  about  the 

moon  : — 

.  .  .  lifting  her  silver  rim 
Above  a  cloud,  and  with  a  gradual  swim 
Coming  into  the  blue  with  all  her  light. 

They  contain  also  the  picture  of  the  swan  who 
"  oar'd  himself  along  "  while  "  his  feet  did  show 
beneath  the  waves  like  Afric's  ebony."  Best  of 
all,  they  contain  the  glorious  line  : — 

Here  are  sweet  peas,  on  tip-toe  for  a  flight. 

This  first  volume,  as  the  word  goes,  failed.  But 
Keats  worked  on,  and  the  following  summer  he 
published  Endymiony  of  which  everybody  knows 
the  opening  and  most  Keats-like  line  : — 

A  thing  of  beauty  is  a  joy  for  ever. 

From  Endymion  he  went  straight  forward  to  the 
much  finer  Isabella:  or  the  Pot  of  Easily  which 


270     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

contains    this    undying    indictment    of  capitalist 
greed  : — 

With  her  two  brothers  this  fair  lady  dwelt, 

Enriched  from  ancestral  merchandise, 
And  for  them  many  a  weary  hand  did  swell 

In  torched  mines  and  noisy  factories, 
And  many  once  proud-quiver'd  loins  did  melt 

In  blood  from  stinging  whip  ;  with  hollow  eyes 
Many  all  day  in  dazzling  river  stood, 

To  take  the  rich-ored  driftings  of  the  flood. 
For  them  the  Ceylon  diver  held  his  breath, 

And  went  all  naked  to  the  hungry  shark  ; 
For  them  his  ears  gush'd  blood ;  for  them  in  death 

The  seal  on  the  cold  ice  with  piteous  bark 
Lay  full  of  darts  ;  for  them  alone  did  seethe 

A  thousand  men  in  troubles  wide  and  dark. 

But  while  his  Isabella  year  advanced  Keats 
into  line  with  the  foremost  poets  of  all  lands  and 
all  ages,  it  also  sowed  in  his  frame  the  seeds  of 
early  death.  Consumption  was  in  the  family  : 
and  no  good  came  of  a  spring  journey  to 
Devonshire,  which  he  described  thus  : — 

You  may  say  what  you  will  of  Devonshire :  the 
truth  is  it  is  a  splashy,  rainy,  misty,  snowy,  foggy, 
haily,  floody,  muddy,  slipshod  county.  The  hills  are 
very  beautiful,  when  you  get  a  sight  of  'em ;  the 
primroses  are  out, — but  then  you  are  in.  ...  I  think 
it  well  for  the  honour  of  Britain  that  Julius  Caesar 
did  not  first  land  in  this  county. 


JOHN  KEATS  271 

The  spring  in  Devonshire  was  followed  by  a 
summer  in  Scotland,  where  Keats  dealt  a  fatal 
blow  to  what  he  called  "Jack  Health  "  by  climb- 
ing Ben  Nevis  in  a  mist.  He  returned  to 
London  with  only  thirty  months  to  live.  But 
into  eighteen  of  these  last  months  he  crowded 
Hyperion^  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes^  Lamia,  the 
play  Otho,  and  many  other  works  including  his 
finest  odes.  These  were  the  months  in  which  he 
proved  himself  as  poetical  as  Spenser,  with  a 
poeticalness  which  even  excels  Spenser's  inasmuch 
as  it  appeals  to  everybody  with  a  sense  of  poetry 
and  not  chiefly  to  actual  or  potential  poets. 
Keats  carried  out  his  own  teaching  as  to  "  loading 
every  rift  of  the  subject  with  ore,"  and  he 
practised  as  well  as  preached  the  doctrine  that 
"  Poetry  should  surprise  by  a  fine  excess."  Yet 
his  bejewelled  verse  flies  as  swiftly  as  an  Arab 
horse  bravely  caparisoned  :  unlike  the  verses  of 
too  many  of  his  imitators,  which  lumber  along 
like  elephants  over-burdened  with  gaudy  loads 
of  gilded  trash.  No  poet  has  surpassed  the  greater 
odes  of  Keats  for  combined  ease  and  richness. 
For  example,  after  he  has  cried  out  to  the  nightin- 
gale "Thou  wast  not  born  for  death,  immortal 


2?a     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

bird,"   he   passes   straight   from    an   outcry  to  a 

reverie  in  the  famous  lines  about  : — 

.  .  .  the  self-same  song  that  found  a  path 
Through  the  sad  heart  of  Ruth  when,  sick  for  home, 
She  stood  in  tears  amid  the  alien  corn  ; 

The  same  that  oft-times  hath 
Charm'd  magic  casements,  opening  on  the  foam 
Of  perilous  seas  in  faery  lands  forlorn. 

Again,  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes  is  a  gallery  hung 
from  end  to  end  with  swiftly  and  firmly  painted 
pictures,  such  as  "  the  owl  for  all  her  feathers 
was  a-cold "  ;  "  the  honey'd  middle  of  the 
night "  ;  "  the  music  yearning  like  a  God  in 
pain  "  ;  and 

.  .  .  soon  up  aloft, 

The  silver,  snarling  trumpets  'gan  to  chide  : 
The  level  chambers,  ready  with  their  pride, 
Were  glowing  to  receive  a  thousand  guests  : 
The  carved  angels,  ever  eager-eyed, 
Stared,  where  upon  their  heads  the  cornice  rests, 
With  hair  blown  back  and  wings  put  crosswise  on 
their  breasts. 

Again  : — 

In  all  the  house  was  heard  no  human  sound. 

A  chain-droop'd  lamp  was  flickering  by  each  door  ; 

The  arras,  rich  with  horsemen,  hawk  and  hound, 

Flutter'd  in  the  besieging  wind's  uproar  ; 

And  the  long  carpets  rose  along  the  gusty  floor. 


JOHN  KEATS  273 

Keats'  Isabella  year  was  also  the  year  of  his 
meeting  with  Fanny  Brawne,  a  blonde  young 
creature  who  lived  in  moderate  comfort  with  her 
widowed  mother  near  to  the  poet's  haunts  in 
Hampstead.  As  unprecocious  in  love  as  he  had 
been  in  poetry,  Keats  found  at  first  that  Miss 
Brawne's  presence  irritated  him.  He  had  already 
written  : — 

The  generality  of  women  appear  to  me  as  children 
to  whom  I  would  rather  give  a  sugar-plum  than  my 
time. 

ButMiss  Brawne's  blooming  cheeks  and  pretty  hair 
and  grey-blue  eyes  and  high  spirits  broke  him 
down  :  and  he  fell  in  love  so  immeasurably  that, 
after  their  betrothal,  Keats  had  to  force  himself 
into  exile  at  Winchester  because  the  alternate 
pangs  and  raptures  of  his  passion  were  unmanning 
him.  His  friend  Dilke  said  : — 

It  is  quite  a  settled  thing  between  John  Keats  and 
Miss  Brawne,  God  help  them.  It's  a  bad  thing  for 
them.  ...  He  don't  like  anyone  to  look  at  her  or 
speak  to  her. 

For  four  months  the  lover  contrived  to  endure 
his  self-banishment.  Then  he  returned  to 
London,  intent  upon  earning  money  by  journal- 


274     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

ism.  He  took  lodgings  in  Westminster,  so  that 
a  few  miles  of  distance  might  deliver  him  from 
temptation.  But,  after  two  days,  he  was  drawn 
to  Hampstead  and,  in  his  own  phrase,  "  into  the 
fire."  Forty-eight  hours  later  he  indulged  him- 
self in  the  luxury  of  writing  a  love-letter 

to  see  if  this  will  assist  in  dismissing  you  from  my 
mind  for  ever  so  short  a  time.  Upon  my  soul,  I 
can  think  of  nothing  else.  ...  I  cannot  exist  with- 
out you.  I  am  forgetful  of  everything  but  seeing  you 
again — my  life  seems  to  stop  there — I  see  no  further. 
You  have  absorb'd  me. 

Within  the  next  seven  days,  of  which  he  spent 
three  under  the  Brawnes'  own  roof  and  two  with 
one  of  the  Brawnes'  neighbours,  he  struck  his  flag 
and  surrendered.  The  Westminster  lodgings 
were  given  up,  and  he  settled  at  Hampstead, 
next  door  to  his  beloved.  "  I  shall  be  able  to  do 
nothing,"  he  wrote.  "  I  should  like  to  cast  the 
die  for  Love  or  Death." 

Death  overheard,  and  quickened  his  march. 
On  the  3rd  February,  1820,  came  the  cough  and 
the  warning  drop  of  blood.  With  his  medical 
training,  Keats  could  read  the  message.  "  It  is 
arterial  blood,"  he  said,  with  a  calmness  which  the 


ISABELLA. 

After  W.  Hoiinan  Hunt,  R.A. 


JOHN  KEATS  275 

friend  who  heard  him  could  never  forget.  "  That 
drop  of  blood  is  my  death-warrant.  I  must 
die." 

Italy  was  a  word  of  hope.  In  September  the 
poet  sailed  for  Naples  in  the  noble  company  of 
the  great-hearted  young  painter  Joseph  Severn. 
At  Naples  Keats  tried  hard  to  be  brave  and 
bright.  But,  now  and  again,  his  anguish  blazed 
out :  and  here  is  surely  one  of  the  saddest  letters 
ever  written  : — 

I  can  bear  to  die — I  cannot  bear  to  leave  her.  .  .  . 
Oh  God,  God,  God  !  Everything  I  have  in  my  trunks 
that  reminds  me  of  her  goes  through  me  like  a  spear. 
The  silk  lining  she  put  in  my  travelling  cap  scalds  my 
head.  My  imagination  is  horribly  vivid  about  her — I 
see  her — I  hear  her.  .  .  .  Oh,  I  have  coals  of  fire  in 
my  breast !  It  surprises  me  that  the  human  heart 
is  capable  of  so  much  misery. 

In  England  Keats  had  not  been  a  religious 
man.  From  the  fact  that  his  three  younger 
brothers  were  all  christened  in  a  batch,  it  may  be 
inferred  that  his  parents  were  not  punctilious 
Christians  :  and  there  was  something  deeper  than 
banter  in  Keats'  note  on  his  Ode  to  Psyche :  "  I 
am  more  orthodox  than  to  let  a  heathen  goddess 


*7*  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

be  so  neglected."  Accordingly  it  came  to  pass 
that  he  sought  a  non-Christian  way  of  escape 
from  the  dark  residue  of  a  life  unlit  by  any 
hopes  of  a  life  beyond.  At  Rome  he  entreated 
Severn  to  give  him  a  bottle  of  laudanum  which 
he  had  confided  to  his  friend's  care.  Their 
funds  were  small,  and  the  poet  shrank  even  more 
from  the  troubles  he  was  laying  upon  the  young 
painter  than  from  his  own  bodily  pain  and 
spiritual  agony.  But  Severn,  a  devout  believer, 
prevailed.  Keats  opened  his  heart  to  Christian 
faith  and  hope  ;  and  his  last  days  were  "  like 
waters  still'd  at  even."  On  23rd  February,  1821, 
he  said,  "  I  am  dying.  I  shall  die  easy.  Don't 
be  frightened — be  firm,  and  thank  God  it  has 
come."  The  same  night,  as  he  slept,  Death 
came  :  and,  like  Keats'  own  Porphyro, 

Into  the  dream  he  melted,  as  the  rose 
Blendeth  its  odour  with  the  violet. 

He  was  laid  in  the  Protestant  Cemetery  of 
Rome  near  the  pyramid  of  Caius  Cestius  :  and 
the  loyal  Severn,  who  outlived  his  friend  for 
nearly  sixty  years,  lies  at  his  side. 

Keats,  as  we  have  seen,  was  stirred  up  to  write 


JOHN  KEATS  277 

by  Spenser.  He  fondly  believed  that  the  spiritual 
presence  of  Shakespeare  watched  over  him  like  a 
tenth  muse  or  a  guardian  angel.  His  death  was 
grandly  sung  by  Shelley  in  the  everlasting  Adonais. 
His  works  became  the  fount  from  which  was 
drawn  half  the  inspiration  of  Tennyson.  Thus 
was  his  prophecy  fulfilled  :  and,  backward  and 
forward,  to  the  right  and  to  the  left,  he  is  linked 
for  ever  by  untarnishable  links  "  among  the 
English  Poets." 


ALFRED  TENNYSON 

A  S  one  of  the  Grand  Old  Men  whose 
personalities  dominated  art  and  science, 
politics  and  religion,  throughout  the  longest 
reign  in  English  history,  Alfred  Tennyson  both 
enriched  and  impoverished  English  poetry.  He 
enriched  it  with  very  many  very  beautiful  works: 
he  impoverished  it  by  so  preoccupying  the  Eng- 
lish mind  with  his  long-drawn  and  dignified 
activity  that  younger  growths  of  poetry  have 
languished  under  his  broad  shadow  for  want  of 
sun  and  air.  From  the  instantly  successful 
publication  of  Locksley  Hall  and  Mnone  in  1842 
to  the  appearance  of  his  play  The  Foresters  in 
the  year  of  his  death,  Tennyson  filled  during 
exactly  half  a  century  nearly  all  the  scanty 
space  which  the  English  mind  could  spare  from 
material  progress  and  scientific  investigation. 
Busy  people  had  a  comfortable  feeling  that  the 
Poet-Laureate,  or  official  idealist-in-chief,  was 
the  right  man  in  the  right  place,  and  he  sup- 

278 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  279 

plied  them  with  so  many  volumes  that  they  had 
no  need  to  encourage  irresponsibles.  Besides, 
Tennyson's  idealism  was  restful.  Unlike  Brown- 
ing, he  set  no  Chinese  puzzles.  His  Liberalism 
was  of  the  gentle  order.  He  was  neither  a 
revolutionary,  like  the  tumultuous  and  scandal- 
ous Byron  and  Shelley  who  had  preceded  him, 
nor  an  iconoclast  of  the  accepted  religion  and 
morality,  like  the  young  Swinburne.  He  was 
the  poet  of  law  and  order. 

For  this  gentle  role,  his  birth  and  social 
position  prepared  him.  The  staid  representa- 
tives of  things  as  they  have  been  and  as  respec- 
tability decrees  they  ought  to  be  in  England  are 
the  country  clergy  ;  and  Tennyson's  father  was 
a  country  clergyman  and  his  mother  a  clergy- 
man's daughter.  His  father,  the  Rev.  Dr. 
George  Clayton  Tennyson,  was  the  rector  of 
Somersby,  in  Lincolnshire,  and  the  poet  was 
born  at  that  village  on  6th  August,  1809. 

Cowper  found  himself  beginning  to  be  a  poet 
at  fifty ;  in  Tennyson  the  divine  gift  stirred 
from  childhood.  The  rectory  of  Somersby  was 
blessed  with  an  atmosphere  peculiarly  fitted  to 
encourage  its  growth.  Alfred  was  the  fourth 


280  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

of  twelve  children,  hardly  one  of  whom  was 
without  the  faculty  of  writing  verse.  The 
music  of  poesy  was  in  him  from  the  first.  He 
tells  us  that  before  he  could  read  he  was  in  the 
habit  on  stormy  days  of  spreading  his  arms  to 
the  wind  and  crying  out,  "  I  hear  a  voice  that's 
speaking  in  the  wind  "  ;  and  the  words  "  far, 
far  away  "  had  always  a  strange  charm  for  him. 
His  father  was  a  man  of  artistic  temperament 
and  no  mean  culture,  while  his  two  elder 
brothers,  Frederick  and  Charles,  were  possessed 
of  fine  poetic  gifts,  as  is  attested  by  the  works 
they  have  left  behind  them.  Charles  especially 
(known  as  Charles  Tennyson  Turner)  became 
the  author  of  sonnets,  the  best  of  which  can 
stand  unafraid  beside  those  of  his  more  famous 
brother.  Between  him  and  Alfred  there  was 
ever  a  close  intimacy  of  brain  and  heart,  evi- 
dence of  which  was  given  to  the  world  in  1826 
by  the  publication  of  Poems  by  Two  Brothers. 
When  they  were  both  children,  Charles  handed  his 
brother  a  slate  and  bade  him  compose  some  verses 
about  the  flowers  in  the  garden,  and  when  the  work 
was  done,  looked  it  over,  and  gave  it  his  im- 
primatur with  the  words,  "Yes,  you  can  write." 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  281 

A  letter  on  Milton's  Samson  Agomstes^  written 
by  Tennyson  to  his  aunt  when  he  was  only 
twelve  years  of  age,  betrays  unusual  knowledge 
and  critical  ability  for  so  young  a  boy.  Closing 
with  a  reference  to  Milton's  use  of  the  phrase — 
"  The  Gates  of  Azzar,"  he  says  : — 

This  probably,  as  Bp.  Newton  observes,  was  to 
avoid  too  great  an  alliteration,  which  the  "  Gates  of 
Gaza  "  would  have  caused,  though  (in  my  opinion)  it 
would  have  rendered  it  more  beautiful :  and  (though 
I  do  not  affirm  it  as  a  fact)  perhaps  Milton  gave  it 
that  name  for  the  sake  of  novelty,  as  all  the  world 
knows  he  was  a  great  pedant.  I  have  not,  at  present, 
time  to  write  any  more  :  perhaps  I  may  continue  my 
remarks  in  another  letter  to  you  :  but  (as  I  am  very 
volatile  and  fickle)  you  must  not  depend  upon  me, 
for  I  think  you  do  not  know  any  one  who  is  so  fickle 
as 

Your  affectionate  nephew, 

A.  TENNYSON. 

At  about  this  period  he  wrote  an  epic  of  six 
thousand  lines  in  the  style  of  Walter  Scott.  He 
said  of  it : — 

Though  the  performance  was  very  likely  worth 
nothing  I  never  felt  myself  more  truly  inspired.  I 
wrote  as  much  as  seventy  lines  at  one  time  and  used 
to  go  shouting  them  about  the  fields  in  the  dark. 


282     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

There  was  merit  enough  in  the  poem  to  lead  his 
father,  a  very  competent  judge,  to  exclaim,  "  If 
that  boy  dies,  one  of  our  greatest  poets  will  have 
gone."  Tennyson's  grandmother  used  to  assert 
that  all  Alfred's  poetry  came  from  her.  When 
she  passed  away,  his  grandfather  requested  him 
to  write  a  poem  on  her  death.  For  this  the 
old  gentleman  gave  him  half  a  guinea  with  the 
words,  "  Here  is  half  a  guinea  for  you,  the  first 
you  have  ever  earned  by  poetry,  and  take  my 
word  for  it,  the  last."  Never  was  prophecy 
more  astray  :  for,  of  all  poets,  few  have  been 
better  remunerated  than  Alfred  Tennyson. 

In  the  childhood  of  this  poet,  as  in  that  of 
Byron,  there  is  made  manifest  the  advantage 
of  leaving  a  boy  at  liberty  to  browse  on  the 
contents  of  a  well -furnished  library.  When 
Tennyson  was  seven  years  of  age  he  was  sent 
to  a  school  at  Louth.  "  How  I  did  hate  that 
school  1  "  he  remarked  in  after  life.  "  The  only 
good  I  ever  got  from  it  was  the  memory  of  the 
words  sonus  desilientis  aquae^  and  of  an  old  wall 
covered  with  wild  weeds  opposite  the  school 
windows."  Here  he  remained  only  two  years, 
and  thenceforward,  from  nine  to  nineteen,  was 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  283 

under  the  tuition  of  his  father,  a  competent 
scholar,  and  enough  of  a  critic  to  give  his  son 
such  sound  advice  as — "  Don't  write  so  rhyth- 
mically ;  break  your  lines  occasionally  for  the 
sake  of  variety."  Among  the  father's  books 
some  of  those  most  read  were  Shakespeare, 
Milton,  Burke,  Goldsmith,  Addison,  Swift, 
Defoe,  Bunyan,  Rabelais,  and  Cervantes.  An- 
other favourite  author  with  Charles  and  Alfred 
was  Byron.  When  the  news  of  Byron's  death 
arrived  in  1824 — that  is  to  say,  when  Tennyson 
was  fourteen — the  whole  world  seemed  to  be 
darkened  for  the  boy,  and  in  bitter  distress  he 
carved  on  a  sandstone  rock  the  words,  "  Byron 
is  dead." 

The  keen  observation  of  nature  so  manifest 
in  his  poetry  was  awakened  in  Tennyson  as  a 
child,  and  we  are  told  by  his  son  that  he  would 
reel  off  abundantly  such  lines  as 

When  winds  are  east  and  violets  blow, 
And  slowly  stalks  the  parson  crow. 

And:— 

The  quick-wing'd  gnat  doth  make  a  boat 
Of  his  old  husk  wherewith  to  float 
To  a  new  life !  all  low  things  range 
To  higher !  but  I  cannot  change. 


284     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

That  he  had  the  premonition  of  future  emin- 
ence which  is  not  uncommon  to  genius  may  be 
gathered  from  some  words  of  his  brother 
Arthur  : — 

Alfred  and  I  often  took  long  rambles  together,  and 
on  one  particular  afternoon,  when  we  were  in  the 
home  fields  talking  of  our  respective  futures,  he  said 
most  emphatically,  "  Well,  Arthur,  I  mean  to  be 
famous,"  .  .  .  Like  my  father,  Alfred  had  a  great 
head,  so  that  when  I  put  on  his  hat  it  came  down 
over  my  face.  He  too  like  my  father  had  a  powerful 
frame,  a  splendid  physique. 

Tennyson's  mother  also  should  perhaps  have 
some  of  the  credit  of  his  fine  appearance  as 
well  as  his  mental  powers.  He  spoke  of  her 
as  a  "  remarkable  and  saintly  woman."  She 
had  been  one  of  the  beauties  of  the  county. 
When  nearly  eighty  and  supposed  to  be  deaf, 
a  daughter  was  recounting  her  offers  of  mar- 
riage, and  mentioned  the  number  as  twenty-four. 
"  No,  my  dear,"  broke  in  emphatically  the  deaf 
old  lady,  "  twenty-five." 

In  1827  were  published  the  Poems  by  Two 
Brothers,  written  when  Charles  was  between  six- 
teen and  eighteen  and  Alfred  between  fifteen 
and  seventeen.  Of  the  £20  promised  them 


Copyrigltt:  Fredk.  Hollyer. 

SIR  GALAHAD. 

AfterG.  F.  Watts,  R.A. 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  285 

by  Jackson,  of  Louth,  their  publishers,  more 
than  half  had  to  be  taken  in  books  out  of  his 
shop.  With  part  of  the  remainder  the  two 
youthful  bards,  on  the  afternoon  of  publication, 
hired  a  carriage  and  drove  fourteen  miles  to 
Mablethorpe  to  share  their  triumph,  as  Charles 
said,  with  the  winds  and  waves. 

In  February,  1828,  Charles  and  Alfred 
Tennyson  entered  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
where  Alfred  remained  until,  in  1831,  he  was 
summoned  home  by  the  death  of  his  father. 
Two  things  stand  out  in  Tennyson's  college 
course  :  the  writing  of  the  poem  Timbuetoo,  by 
which  he  gained  the  University  prize  of  1829, 
and  the  friendship  he  formed  with  Arthur 
Hallam.  To  the  temporal  rupture  of  that 
friendship  by  the  death  of  Hallam  in  1833  we 
owe  In  Memoriam,  the  choicest  and  ripest  fruit 
of  Tennyson's  genius.  Written  in  memory  of 
his  departed  friend,  it  widened,  during  the 
seventeen  years  of  its  shaping,  from  the  utter- 
ance of  a  personal  grief  into  a  deep  and  earnest 
discussion  of  the  sorrow  of  the  race.  It  exer- 
cised considerable  influence  on  the  thought  of 
the  day,  its  pathetic  endeavour  to  hold  on  to 


286     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

faith  in  God  and  immortality  in  face  of  the 
doubts  begotten  by  the  awful  silence  of  death 
and  the  apparent  heartlessness  of  Nature,  rind- 
ing a  response  in  many  minds.  Tennyson 
himself  said  : — 

The  sections  were  written  at  many  different  places, 
and  as  the  phases  of  our  intercourse  came  to  my 
memory  and  suggested  them.  I  did  not  write  them 
with  any  view  of  weaving  them  into  a  whole,  or  for 
publication,  until  I  found  that  I  had  written  so  many. 
The  different  moods  of  sorrow  as  in  a  drama  are 
dramatically  given,  and  my  conviction  that  fear, 
doubts,  and  suffering  will  find  answer  and  relief 
only  through  Faith  in  a  God  of  Love. 

In  Memoriam  was  published  in  1850.  Five 
years  previously  a  pension  of  ^200  per  annum 
had  been  granted  to  the  poet,  "  a  mark,"  as 
Sir  Robert  Peel  put  it,  "  of  royal  favour  to  one 
who  had  devoted  to  worthy  objects  great  in- 
tellectual powers."  In  three  years  more,  when 
he  was  but  forty-four,  his  income  from  his 
poems  had  reached  ^500  a  year.  It  must  not 
be  supposed,  however,  that  poverty  and  hard- 
ship and  sorrow  had  neglected  to  take  part  in 
his  emotional  education.  A  few  years  before 
the  grant  of  the  pension,  he  had  succumbed  to 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  287 

the  lures  of  a  tempter  and  had  sold  all  his  little 
property  so  as  to  invest  in  "  The  Patent  Decora- 
tive Carving  Company,"  which  promptly  failed 
and  left  him  without  a  penny.  What  sharpened 
the  thrust  of  this  misfortune  was  the  fact  that 
he  was  on  the  point  of  becoming  betrothed  to 
Miss  Emily  Sellwood.  He  had  turned  thirty 
and  had  no  profession  save  poetry.  The  shock 
so  unmanned  him  that,  for  a  time,  his  life  was 
in  danger.  But  hydropathy  administered  first 
at  Cheltenham,  and,  again  after  a  relapse,  at  Prest- 
bury,  wooed  him  back  to  health,  while  the  pen- 
sion delivered  him  from  straits  so  close  that  one 
of  his  biographers  declares  him  to  have  endured 
"  the  most  grinding  poverty." 

The  year  that  witnessed  the  publication  of  In 
Memoriam  was  also  signalized  by  Tennyson's 
appointment  to  the  now  honourable  office  of 
Poet-Laureate  in  succession  to  Wordsworth. 
The  first  outcome  of  his  new  appointment  was 
the  Ode  on  the  death  of  the  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton, in  which  occur  the  two  well-known  lines, 
with  their  unhappy  taint  of  doggerel  : — 

Not  once  or  twice  in  our  rough  island-story 
The  path  of  duty  was  the  way  to  glory. 


288     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Fulfilling  the  saying  that  big  things  happen 
in  threes,  the  year  1850  saw  not  only  the  publi- 
cation of  In  Memoriam  and  Tennyson's  accession 
to  the  Laureateship,  but  also  his  marriage  with 
the  constant  Emily  Sellwood,  to  whose  sister 
Louisa  his  brother  Charles  had  been  united  in 
1836.  Of  this  loyal  wife  he  remarked  in  after 
years,  "  The  peace  of  God  came  into  my  life 
before  the  altar  when  I  wedded  her."  The 
marriage  was  celebrated  at  Shiplake  on  the 
Thames  in  the  quietest  fashion,  both  cake  and 
dresses  arriving  too  late  ;  but  the  poet  described 
it  as  "  the  nicest  wedding  "  he  had  ever  been  at. 
During  the  drive  from  Shiplake  to  Pangbourne 
he  wrote  some  playful  verses  to  the  clergyman 
who  had  performed  the  ceremony.  Here  are 
the  first  two  : — 

Vicar  of  this  pleasant  spot 

Where  it  was  my  chance  to  marry, 

Happy,  happy  be  your  lot 

In  the  Vicarage  by  the  quarry. 

You  were  he  that  knit  the  knot ! 

Sweetly,  smoothly  flow  your  life, 

Never  tithe  unpaid  perplex  you, 
Parish  feud,  or  party  strife, 

All  things  please  you,  nothing  vex  you, 
You  have  given  me  such  a  wife. 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  289 

Tennyson  shared  with  Wordsworth  the  felicity, 
unusual  in  the  records  of  great  poets,  of  enjoy- 
ing for  many  years  a  happy  home  life.  Farring- 
ford  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  with  its  charming 
views  of  sea  and  capes  and  downs  and  park, 
afforded  him  a  delightful  resting-place  for  forty 
years.  Here  much  of  his  best  known  work  was 
wrought,  including  Maud,  The  Idylls  of  the  King, 
Enoch  Arden^  and  many  shorter  poems.  Solitude 
he  prized  greatly,  and  claimed  always  a  due 
share  of  it  for  reading  and  meditation,  but  he 
had  also  a  keen  appreciation  of  the  pleasures  of 
social  intercourse,  and  numbered  most  of  the 
notable  people  of  the  day  among  his  friends  and 
visitors.  His  laugh  was  full  and  sonorous, 
and  he  had  a  gift  for  the  telling  of  humorous 
stories,  particularly  those  that  owed  their  raci- 
ness  to  a  spice  of  the  Lincolnshire  dialect, 
such  as  the  farmer's  prayer  :  "  Oh  God,  send 
us  rain,  and  especially  on  John  Stubbs's  field 
in  the  middle  marsh,  and  if  Thou  doest 
not  know  it,  it  has  a  big  thorn  tree  in  the 
middle  of  it." 

Phillips  Brooks  has  given  us   in  his  journal 
a  pleasant  picture   of  Tennyson  and  his  dwell- 


29o     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

ing    place,    Farringford,   as    he   found   them   in 

1883:— 

He  is  finer  than  his  pictures,  a  man  of  good  six 
feet  and  over,  but  stooping  as  he  walks,  for  he  is 
seventy-four  years  old,  and  we  shall  stoop  if  we  ever 
live  to  that  age.  A  big  dome  of  a  head,  bald  on  the 
forehead  and  the  top,  and  very  fine  to  look  at.  A 
deep  bright  eye,  a  grand  eagle  nose,  a  mouth  which 
you  cannot  see,  a  black  felt  hat,  and  a  loose  tweed 
suit.  These  were  what  I  noticed  in  the  author  of  In 
Memoriam.  The  house  is  a  delightful  old  rambling 
thing,  whose  geography  one  never  learns,  not  elegant 
but  very  comfortable,  covered  with  pictures  inside 
and  ivies  outside,  with  superb  ilexes  and  other  trees 
about  it,  and  lovely  pieces  of  view  over  the  Channel 
here  and  there. 

Of  the  poet's  other  house,  Aldworth,  near 
Haslemere,  the  lines  addressed  to  Sir  Edward 
Hamley,  as  a  prologue  to  The  Charge  of  the 
Heavy  Brigade,  afford  a  pleasant,  autumnal 
glimpse  : — 

Our  birches  yellowing,  and  from  each 

The  light  leaf  falling  fast, 
While  squirrels  from  our  fiery  beech 

Were  bearing  off  the  mast. 
You  came,  and  look'd,  and  loved  the  view, 

Long  known  and  loved  by  me, 
Green  Sussex  fading  into  blue 

With  one  gray  glimpse  of  sea. 


ALFRED  TENNYSON  291 

The  poet  spent  his  days  alternately  between 
these  two  lovely  homes,  of  late  years  generally  re- 
maining at  Farringford  till  the  end  of  June,  and 
then  removing  to  the  more  bracing  air  of  Aldworth. 

In  1883  Tennyson  was  created  Baron  of 
Freshwater  and  Aldworth,  his  own  remark  being, 
"  By  Gladstone's  advice  I  have  consented  to  take 
the  peerage  ;  but  for  my  own  part  I  shall  regret 
my  simple  name  all  my  life." 

Tennyson  died  at  Aldworth  on  6th  October, 
1 8 92, aged  eighty-three  years.  Great  peace  marked 
his  end.  "  Where  is  my  Shakespeare  ?  I  must 
have  my  Shakespeare."  These,  and  "  I  want  the 
blinds  up,  I  want  to  see  the  sky  and  the  light !  " 
were  almost  his  last  words.  Shakespeare,  the  sky, 
the  light :  an  unconscious  cry  for  what  had  been 
the  sustenance  of  his  life — Humanity,  Nature, 
Truth.  He  was  buried,  amid  universal  mourn- 
ing, in  Westminster  Abbey,  on  I2th  October. 

In  his  poetry,  Tennyson  was  the  fine  flower 
of  gentle  Englishry  as  it  existed  before  it  had 
been  acted  upon  by  the  powerful  solvents  which 
are  fast  transmuting  it  into  a  new  thing.  The 
decay  of  agriculture,  the  dwarfing  of  landed 
interests  beside  the  huge  fortunes  made  by  in- 


292  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

dustrial  and  high-financial  processes,  the  abridg- 
ing of  privilege,  and  the  granting  of  scanty 
education  and  abundant  political  power  to  the 
masses  of  the  people  have  replaced  Tennyson's 
England  by  an  England  in  which  he  could  not 
have  felt  at  home.  Large  tracts  of  Tennyson's 
England  are  already  as  remote  as  Spenser's  fairy- 
land. But,  for  this  very  reason,  his  work  will 
always  be  valuable,  not  only  as  poetry,  but  as  a 
document.  He  has  expressed  both  sides  of  the 
Victorian  idealism — the  looking  back  to  medieval 
faith  and  chivalry  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  look- 
ing forward  into  the  new  world  apparently  opened 
by  the  doctrine  of  Darwin  on  the  other. 

Regarded  purely  as  a  poet,  it  must  be  said 
that  his  benefactors  were  bigger  men  than  his 
heirs.  He  inherited  his  feeling  for  nature  and 
his  instinct  for  fine  workmanship  from  Words- 
worth and  Keats  :  but  what  he  received  from 
major  poets  he  has  passed  on  to  minors.  In- 
deed, it  may  ultimately  be  reckoned  as  his  most 
remarkable  achievement  that  he  raised  incalcul- 
ably the  level  of  minor  poetry  and  thus  made 
it  hard  for  major  poets  to  stand  head  and 
shoulders  above  their  brethren. 


ROBERT  BROWNING 

TXT'HEN  George  the  Fourth  was  king  a  lad 
stopped   one    day  outside  a  second-hand 
bookseller's   shop   in    London    and    gaped   at   a 
placard  reading  : — 

MR.    SHELLEY'S    ATHEISTICAL   POEM 
VERY   SCARCE. 

The  words  bit  into  the  lad's  mind.  At  first  he 
believed  that  "  Mr.  Shelley  "  was  a  nom  de  guerre^ 
but  at  last  he  found  that  a  Shelley  had  truly 
existed,  and  had  written  books,  and  was  dead. 
Without  emphasizing  the  atheism,  the  lad  begged 
his  mother  to  buy  him  Shelley's  works.  But  the 
local  booksellers  had  never  heard  Shelley's  name, 
and  it  was  only  after  a  persevering  search  that 
the  obliging  mamma  found  what  she  wanted  at  a 
shop  in  Vere  Street,  alongside  the  equally  dusty 
"  remainder "  of  another  dead  author  named 
John  Keats.  She  bought  the  books  of  both  poets 

293 


294     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

and  took  them  home  to   her  son,  whose  name 

was  Robert  Browning. 

English,  Scottish,  and  German  blood  mingled 
in  the  veins  of  Robert  Browning,  and  his  best 
poems  were  written  in  Italy,  France,  and  Russia. 
According  to  people  who  knew  him,  he  came  to 
acquire  North  Italian  gestures  and  manners 
through  his  long  sojourn  in  that  country.  Prob- 
ably this  cosmopolitanism  is  partly  to  blame  for 
the  fact  that  Browning  preferred  to  express  him- 
self in  rather  jerky  English,  and  that,  although 
he  had  a  native  gift  of  melody,  he  rarely  allowed 
himself  to  sing  as  a  melodious  poet.  To  be  a 
joy  for  ever  poetry  must  be  a  thing  of  beauty. 
It  was  unfortunate,  also,  that  Browning  lived 
and  worked  at  a  time  when  Carlyle's  substitute 
for  the  English  language  was  being  admired  :  for 
his  mamma's  gifts  of  books  by  Keats  seem  to 
have  been  thrown  away  on  a  poet  who  deliber- 
ately devised  a  gawky  idiom  for  the  expression 
of  his  most  gracious  thoughts. 

Robert  Browning  was  born  in  London  on 
yth  May,  1812.  His  father  and  grandfather  had 
held  posts  in  the  Bank  of  England,  and,  as  well- 
to-do  members  of  the  middle-class,  Robert's 


ROBERT  BROWNING  295 

parents  were  able  to  indulge  him  when  he  decided 
to  follow  no  profession  save  poetry.  His  educa- 
tion, after  his  fifteenth  year,  was  mainly  of  the 
self-helping,  browsing  order,  with  the  result  that 
his  memory  was  surfeited  with  out-of-the-way 
facts,  while  his  brain  was  under-drilled  as  regards 
hard  mental  discipline. 

Browning  came  of  age  and  rushed  into  print  in 
the  same  year.  Hearing  that  he  had  written  a 
poem,  an  aunt  came  forward  with  the  funds 
necessary  for  publishing  Pauline  :  A  Fragment  of 
a  Confession.  It  was  sent  forth  anonymously  and 
with  a  full  apparatus  of  mystery,  but  the  British 
public  remained  cold.  After  a  long  jaunt  in 
Russia  and  Italy,  Browning  returned  to  London 
and  published  Paracelsus^  which  won  him  the 
acquaintance  of  many  literary  men,  and  led  to  the 
writing  of  Strafford^  a  tragedy  which  ran  for  five 
nights  with  Macready  in  the  title-role.  Strafford 
is  neither  good  poetry  nor  good  drama.  More- 
over, it  is  chilly.  But  Strafford  was  only  the 
raw,  dark  hour  before  the  warm,  bright  dawn. 
During  a  journey  in  Italy,  which  ensued  upon 
its  failure,  Browning  wrote  many  of  the  best  of 
the  lyrics  by  which  his  fame  will  be  kept  alive. 


296     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

The  piping  times  when  an  unknown  young 
poet  could  walk  into  a  publisher's  office  with  a 
manuscript  and  walk  out  again  with  ten  pounds 
were  drawing  to  a  close.  The  young  Wordsworth 
and  the  young  Coleridge  had  received  thirty 
guineas  for  lyrical  ballads  :  Keats  had  sold  the 
copyright  of  Endymion  for  ^"100  ;  and  even 
Browning's  young  contemporaries,  the  brothers 
Tennyson,  had  sold  a  book  for  ^20,  half  in  cash 
and  half  in  kind.  But  with  the  author  of  Pauline 
things  were  different.  Hard-hearted  publishers 
declined  to  take  risks,  and  after  the  failure  of 
his  almost  unintelligible  Sordello  in  1840,  young 
Browning  jumped  at  the  offer  of  the  publisher 
Moxon  to  print — though  at  the  author's  expense 
— his  further  works,  cheaply  as  pamphlets  in 
double  columns.  This  was  the  origin  of  Bells 
and  Pomegranates  (1841-6),  of  which  eight 
numbers  appeared.  One  was  Pippa  Passes.  Parts 
of  this  remarkable  little  miracle-play  have  been 
praised  without  discrimination.  For  example, 
in  Pippa's  famous  song,  the  line  "  The  hillside's 
dew-pearl'd "  is  stiff  and  unsingable,  and  was 
obviously  concocted  to  make  some  sort  of  a 
rhyme  with  "  world."  But,  as  a  whole,  Pippa 


ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING. 

From  a  Crayon  thawing  ttiaa'e  in  fyme  in  1859,  by  Field  Tal/onrd. 


ROBERT  BROWNING  297 

Passes  will  stand  very  high  among  the  greater 
poems  of  the  Victorian  era  ;  and  Elizabeth  Barrett 
showed  herself  a  sound  critic  when  she  told  her 
wooer  that  of  all  his  poems  Pippa  Passes  was  the 
one  she  would  have  been  most  proud  to  write. 
Browning  never  excelled  these  lines  about  the 
storm  : — 

Buried  in  woods  we  lay,  you  recollect ; 

Swift  ran  the  searching  tempest  overhead ; 

And  ever  and  anon  some  bright  white  shaft 

Burned  through  the  pine-tree  roof,  here  burned  and  there, 

As  if  God's  messenger  thro'  the  close  wood  screen 

Plunged  and  replunged  his  weapon  at  a  venture, 

Feeling  for  guilty  thee  and  me  :  then  broke 

The  thunder  like  a  whole  sea  overhead. 

During  Browning's  third  visit  to  Italy,  Eliza- 
beth Barrett  published  a  book  of  poems  in  which 
Bells  and  "Pomegranates  and  their  author  were 
mentioned.  In  one  of  the  poems,  Lady  Geral- 
dines  Courtship^  Lady  Geraldine's  tiresome  lover 
was  declared  to  have  read  aloud  : — 

At  times  a  modern   volume,   Wordsworth's   solemn-thoughted 

idyl, 

Howitt's  ballad-verse,  or  Tennyson's  enchanted  reverie, 
Or  from  Browning  some  pomegranate,  which,  if  cut  deep  down 

the  middle, 
Shows  a  heart  within  blood-tinctured  of  a  veined  humanity. 


298     GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

Considered  as  poetry,  this  unspeakable  quatrain 
was  bad  enough  to  repel  Browning  for  ever, 
but  considered  as  a  compliment  from  a  woman 
who  had  succeeded  to  a  man  who  had  failed,  it 
was  mellifluous  and  of  a  sweet  smell.  So  Brown- 
ing wrote  Miss  Barrett  a  letter.  He  had  never 
seen  her,  but  he  plunged  in  boldly,  saying,  "  I 
love  your  books  and  I  love  you  too/' 

To  say,  as  some  have  said,  that  there  is  "  no 
more  beautiful  love-story  "  than  Robert  Brown- 
ing's is  to  misuse  a  word.  Christopher  Marlowe 
taught  that  the  only  true  love  was  love  at  first 
sight :  but  love  before  first  sight  is  against  nature 
and  savours  more  of  the  head  than  of  the  heart. 
Nevertheless,  the  story  is  deeply  touching,  and 
highly  creditable  to  both  the  lovers.  Elizabeth 
Barrett  was  an  invalid,  without  bodily  beauty, 
imprisoned  in  a  room  from  which  the  light  and 
the  free  air  were  banished.  Robert  Browning 
was  in  buoyant  health,  a  rider,  a  dancer,  and  a 
bit  of  a  dandy.  But  he  stood  by  his  first  declara- 
tion and  proposed  marriage.  Miss  Barrett, 
though  in  love,  hesitated  to  take  him  at  his 
word  ;  and  even  when  a  perfect  understanding 
between  the  pair  had  been  arrived  at,  there  was  a 


ROBERT  BROWNING  299 

further  obstacle.  Miss  Barrett's  selfish  and  obstin- 
ate father  was  determined  that  none  of  his  children 
should  marry.  That  they  should  even  wish  to 
do  so  he  called  "  unfilial  treachery."  In  the  long 
run  the  knot  was  cut  by  an  elopement.  The 
bride  slipped  out  of  the  house  one  September 
morning  in  1846,  and  was  quietly  married  in 
Marylebone  Church.  After  the  ceremony  she 
returned  home  as  if  nothing  had  happened  :  but  a 
week  later  she  and  the  bridegroom  fled  to  Paris. 
Her  father  never  forgave  her  ;  her  letters  were 
left  for  ever  unopened,  and  even  on  the  birth  of 
her  son — his  grandson — he  ignored  her  overtures 
for  reconciliation. 

At  the  time  of  the  wedding  the  husband  was 
thirty-four  and  the  wife  forty-one.  Fortunately 
the  lady  was  possessed  of  a  little  money  in  her 
own  right,  and  therefore  was  able  to  dissuade 
Browning  from  his  plan  of  working  for  a  living 
outside  the  flowery  but  unfruitful  fields  of  poetry. 
Besides,  one  John  Kenyon,  a  cousin  of  the 
bride  and  an  old  schoolfellow  of  the  bridegroom's 
father,  had  acted  as  a  go-between  in  the  first 
stage  of  the  love  affair,  and  he  settled  £100  a 
year  on  the  newly-wedded  couple.  Ten  years 


300  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

later  he  died,  and  left  the  two  poets  ^"11,000. 
Mrs.  Browning's  books  were  widely  sold,  and, 
accordingly,  her  husband  was  never  once  thwarted 
in  his  designs  upon  poetry  throughout  his  long 
life  of  seven-and-seventy  years. 

From  Florence,  where  the  pair  lived  happily 
until  1 86 1,  Browning  did  not  send  forth  many 
verses.  Indeed,  in  eighteen  years  he  published 
no  more  than  Christmas  Eve  and  Easter  Dayy  and 
the  two  remarkable  volumes  called  Men  and 
Women.  But  Mrs.  Browning's  death  both  brought 
him  back  to  England  and  stirred  him  to  action. 
He  wrought  at  his  poetry  for  three  hours  every 
morning,  and  provided  a  small  but  ever  widen- 
ing circle  of  admirers  with  a  long  series  of  good, 
bad,  and  indifferent  poems.  Much  of  his  writing 
was  done  in  villages  and  small  towns  of  France  ; 
and,  in  that  country,  at  least  two  striking  ex- 
periences broke  the  otherwise  tame  flow  of  his 
life.  On  one  occasion  he  and  Tennyson,  who 
were  travelling  quite  independently  of  one 
another,  both  missed  the  same  French  train  and 
thus  escaped  a  railway  accident  in  which  many 
people  were  killed.  On  another  occasion,  in 
1871,  the  tide  of  German  victories  began  to  set 


ROBERT  BROWNING  301 

so  strongly  towards  the  coast-village  where 
Browning  was  sunning  himself  with  his  family 
that,  he  was  forced  to  flee  in  a  cattle-boat  from 
the  mouth  of  the  Seine. 

Little  by  little  the  general  public  became  aware 
of  Browning's  industry.  The  Ring  and  the  Book 
woke  people  up  by  its  very  audacity.  To  write 
twenty  thousand  lines  all  about  a  forgotten 
Italian  murder-trial,  and  to  publish  them  in  four 
volumes,  was  a  thing  which  poets  did  not  do 
every  day.  Those  who  not  only  gossiped  about 
this  novelty,  but  also  read  it,  found  that  it  was 
nearly  all  good  reading,  and  often  good  poetry. 
They  found  that  Browning's  much-blamed  ob- 
scurity darkened  very  few  of  the  twenty  thousand 
lines,  and  that  the  poet  had  succeeded  in  his 
attempt  to  make  ten  different  persons  tell  the 
same  story  in  ten  different  ways,  each  for  his  own 
ends  or  from  his  own  point  of  view.  For  a 
work  of  this  kind  Browning  was  well  endowed. 
As  his  Men  and  Women  and  Dramatis  Persons  had 
proved,  he  had  the  gift  of  getting  inside  the 
hearts  of  his  real  or  imaginary  personages  and  of 
expressing  the  thoughts  and  feelings  they  ought 
to  have  had.  This  power  of  becoming  ever  so 


302  GREAT  ENGLISH  POETS 

many  different  people  in  turn  is  half  of  the  equip- 
ment of  every  great  dramatist,  the  other  half 
being  his  ability  to  make  his  personages  act  and 
inter-act  in  a  convincing  manner  till  the  inevitable, 
emotional  climax  is  reached.  The  gods  had 
denied  the  second  gift  to  Robert  Browning,  but 
The  Ring  and  the  BooJ^  exists  to  prove  that  he 
possessed  the  first  in  a  supreme  degree. 

In  certain  of  Browning's  later  works,  such  as 
Prince  Hobenstiel-Schwangau,  some  of  the  old  ob- 
scurity returned.  The  obscurity  was  not  usually 
wilful.  It  arose  from  a  habit  of  trying  to  invest 
out-of-the-way  and  fugitive  and  unimportant 
thoughts  with  the  dignity  and  permanence  of 
poetic  classics.  Unfortunately  the  little  bands  of 
studious  disciples  who  formed  Browning  societies 
to  pore  over  his  least  valuable  works  were  not  as 
a  rule  lovers  of  poetry  so  much  as  followers  of 
Ruskin,  turning  works  of  art  inside  out  to  find 
"  helpful  thoughts,"  "  messages  "  "  teaching,"  and 
all  sorts  of  things  with  which  the  simple,  sensuous, 
passionate  art  of  poetry  has  only  collateral 
relations.  Happily,  however,  there  are  signs  of 
a  wholesome  change,  and  Browning  is  beginning 
to  be  treasured  for  the  sake  of  the  many  poems 


ROBERT  BROWNING  3°3 

in  which  he  treated  broad  human  themes  clear- 
headedly and  full-heartedly.  Long  after  Prince 
Hohenstiel-Schwangau  and  Pacchiarotto  have  found 
decent  graves  Browning  will  be  held  in  honour 
for  the  haunting  melody  and  sterling  tenderness 
of  Evelyn  Hope,  for  the  straightforward  manful- 
ness  of  Prospice,  and  for  the  "  fine  careless 
rapture  "  of  Home  Thoughts  from  Abroad. 

Browning  died  in  Venice,  and  was  buried  on 
the  last  day  of  1889,  among  poets  greater  and 
smaller  than  himself,  in  Westminster  Abbey.  In 
the  bulk  of  his  work  mannerism  so  often  took 
the  place  of  style  that  he  has  founded  no  school. 
Tennyson  called  him  "  a  great  thinker  in  verse," 
and  added  : — 

He  has  plenty  of  music  in  him,  but  he  cannot  get 
it  out.  He  has  intellect  enough  for  a  dozen  of  us ; 
but  he  has  not  got  the  glory  of  words. 

Nevertheless,  he  enlarged  the  poetical  statement 
of  romantic  love,  and  the  English  poetry  of  the 
future  will  not  proceed  as  if  he  had  never 
existed. 


THE    END 


WILLIAM    BREXDON   AND  SON,    LTD. 
PRINTERS,    PLYMOUTH 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library 

from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


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